


Let No Man Tear Asunder

by quicksparrows



Series: Side by Side – Chrobin [8]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-01-26 14:28:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 52,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12559440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: "No one else in the world is Emmeryn," Ada says. "No one ever could be. But that doesn't mean this halidom won't do well with a different kind of Exalt — you.""I don't think it wants different," Chrom argues. "I think it wants her. Everyone's expecting her."The war with Plegia is over, and with it comes big change. After a near-death escape from Plegia and an impulsive proposal, Chrom must lead his nation in mourning and take up the crown of Exalt himself while still grieving his sister. Ada had thought her expertise in warfare could easily apply to managing a halidom in transition, but with his ring on her finger and little experience with court protocols, she finds herself spending most of her time arguing with Frederick on how best to serve.





	1. Troubled

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while, but I'm back and taking another stab at a longer piece! Like _New Education_ , this one is going to be chaptered and intermingle plot with porn. 
> 
> It also presumes that the second drama CD "A Dauntless Plegian Storm" is canon. If you've never read it, there's a translation by Azurillturtle [here.](http://azurillturtle.blogspot.ca/p/fire-emblem-awakening.html)
> 
> Anyway: let's get sad. (And sexy.)

.

 

 

Ada notices the ring on her finger. 

It's not that it was snuck onto her while she was sleeping, or as though she'd fallen into a pile of riches and come up adorned with surprise jewels, or anything silly like that. That would be odd, to say the least. It's just that to her knowledge she's never _owned_ a ring before this one, and so it's funny to realize, almost out of nowhere, that she is wearing a ring at all. 

All week it has distracted her –– at dinner, in conversation, when bathing –– and once more it plucks her attention away, this time from the text of her book. But for some peculiar reason this time she feels she's _really_ looking at it for the first time, here in the mid-afternoon light of Chrom's bedroom, even though it has had a home on her ring finger a week now.

She's _engaged._ Isn't that a funny thought?

Funnier, though, that she's noticed the ring's edges are soft. Wouldn't an heirloom ring see most of its wear on the inner edge, not on the outer form?

Ada sets down her book to prise the ring off her finger and hold it up to the light to see, and sure enough, the ring is not just worn but _grooved_.

Frederick pipes up:

"It's a Gimmal ring," he says.

"Sorry?"

"A _Gimmal_ ring," he repeats, but the way he looks at her, she knows he's being pedantic, pretending she hadn't heard him when she was _really_ looking for clarification. Ada had thought that to be quite obvious, but that's Frederick, through and through.

"Yes," she says. "I heard you. What's a Gimmal ring?"

"Truthfully, it's only half of a ring," he says. "A Gimmal ring is a ring made of two or three hoops, one worn by a man, and the other by his wife. If there is a third, it's worn by a witness."

Ada peers at the ring again, processing this. It looks like a complete ring, stone at all, and without that particular groove, she might not have noticed it was missing its twin at all. Half? No, she decides. She has, at best, the _core_ of a ring. She sees where another ring might slide over it, ensconce it.

"So there were other parts?" she asks.

"Of course," he says. "It's an heirloom."

"No need to get defensive, I was just curious," she says. "I wondered if Chrom had the other piece."

Frederick frowns and shakes his head.

"Not to my knowledge."

"Do _you_ have it?" Ada says, lifting her voice just to tease him: "I know you like to keep things safe."

"I'm not a clerk nor a scrivener," he says. "I _don't_."

Ada watches his gaze drift away to the window, brows furrowed. Perhaps he's looking for Chrom on the horizon, which makes Ada feel tempted to get up and look herself, but the couch really is so much more comfortable, and she still wants to get back to that book. Chrom will be back in his own time, probably frost-bitten and surly and itching to crawl into her arms.

"I'm not witness to your engagement," he says unprompted, under his breath, but she catches it anyway. It's too churlish to miss.

Ada watches Frederick carefully. For a long time she had assumed her mere existence in their circle had been an affront to his sensibilities, and she had worked tirelessly to win his favour by action alone. He was a person who could be won over by no other method, and she's sure that's true even today — even a sunny people-pleasing attitude would have never gotten her as far as hard work.

But in this very moment, caught between her ring and her book and Chrom off on the hunt, she considers that perhaps she has personally slighted him. Perhaps she's committed the worst of all betrayals — with the Halidom of Ylisse without its golden Exalt, and immediately in the wake of her fall, there will be a royal wedding. One woman gone, another ushered in too soon.

Ada watches Frederick for a good long moment and finds herself shrinking inwardly. It's not a good feeling.

But there's no sense in driving herself mad about it. 

Her soon-to-be husband is on his way home, and his mood in these trying times is far more important.

 

—⚜—

 

Chrom returns from the hunt around sundown. At the very first sound of trumpets heralding his return to the castle, Ada throws on her coat and boots and goes down to the front gates to meet him, rushing ahead of Frederick. She gets there before they can even dismount, and they meet eyes across the courtyard even though he's still in conversation with the ambassadors. They're an odd little lot, diplomats of all sorts, and Chrom stands out amongst them as the youngest by at least a decade. Also notable is the buck strung across the back of his horse, great antlers hanging aside like tree branches. A warrior king atop of conquest, she thinks. Shot cleanly with a good bow.

From the shelter of the doorway Ada watches Chrom laugh with a middle-aged blond man. When they dismount the snow crunches under their boots, much to the dismay of the steward boys who had been frantically trying to shovel the cobblestones clear beforehand –– alas, alas.

"Ada!" he calls. She waves and he turns his attention back to the blond man. He's too far to hear, but she watches his mouth move around _my fiancée._ He beckons her over, and Ada wraps her thin coat tighter around her to stave off the cold and ventures across the snowy courtyard.

When she gets close he opens his arms to her, and though she is still disinclined to public displays of affection, she sidles right into his embrace. His smile is cheerfully-tired smile and his embrace warm and inviting; it puts her face-first into the furs of his collar. His warmth makes the quilted lining of her coat feel inadequate. He almost _cradles_ her for a moment.

"You're cozy," he says.

"I am," she says. "It's so cold in the castle in winter!"

Chrom laughs; his cheeks are still pink from the cold, and he pulls her in tighter for a moment, as if he could transfer his warmth to her through contact alone. For a moment she can even enjoy that, even though they are surrounded by his hunting party, but he lets her go soon enough, too. His eyes drift to Frederick waiting some distance away and for a moment the two exchange looks.

"Well, you've just barely gotten well," he says. "Let's get away from the door and upstairs to somewhere warm."

"Your room?" she asks. She reaches up to brush some snow from his bangs.

"Uh, _our_ room," he says, and she has to mentally backtrack; _their_ room. Chrom smiles at her, bracing, and he nudges her in the side. "Still hasn't sunk in yet?"

"Maybe not entirely," she admits.

"It'll take time," Chrom says. 

"I'll try to remember that," Ada says, but she's not sure she will. It won't be their room for long. Eventually they'll have to move into the Great Chamber, the solar of the castle belonging to the Exalt and their partner, as befitting their new stations. 

Chrom's eyes fall back on the ambassadors, some of whom remain in casual conversation with each other, others of whom linger on his heels, waiting for an introduction. It seems to occur to Chrom late: "Oh! I'd like you to meet the delegates from the Valmese continent..."

Ada looks to them. She knows each name, having looked them up herself in Frederick's daily itinerary, but she's not sure which name belongs to which face. (She thinks momentarily that she could if her memories permitted her an understanding of different peoples and places. Maybe then she could make educated guesses on the complexion of their skins, the decorations of their regalia, the cuts of their hair –– but it's fruitless _now_.) She turns her eyes back to Chrom, who looks upon his new peers with an oddly boyish pride.

"I'd love for you all to meet my new bride, Ada."

Ada feels a little unease bubbling in her stomach, lingering paranoia of being his bride rather than his chief tactician, but she pushes it down. It's not their business.

"Lovely indeed," says a red-haired woman. She extends a hand to shake, and Ada takes it with a smile. Her eyes are sharp and knowing, but she says nothing more.

"Lady Cerys of Molia," Chrom says. "A small kingdom in the South of Valm."

"Small but _very_ proud," Cerys says.

"Very proud," Chrom repeats. "And this is Tulip. You two should have much to talk about –– he's the strategist for Jesca."

"A fellow tactician," Ada replies, with a tinge of delight. "We'll have to play chess while you're here."

"Putting me through my paces already!" Tulip chuckles. "Looking foward to it, Lady Ada."

"And this is Captain Ronsenburg from Dalmasca," Chrom says, gesturing her to the blond man he'd been talking to earlier. This close, Ada notes that he has a forehead scar as fat and long as a finger. 

"Lady Ada," Captain Ronsenburg says, and when she offers her hand he takes it and kisses the back of her hand. (Ada wishes Virion could match that ease, that grace.) "It's a pleasure to meet the lady I've heard so much about today."

"It's a pleasure to meet you too," Ada says. "I hope Chrom wasn't too single-minded."

Chrom goes pink around the ears. Captain Ronsenburg chuckles.

"Not any more than any young man in love might be!" he says, and Chrom goes pinker still.

"Then I hope you know at least half as much about my proficiency on the battlefield."

"I do believe he decided to take you as his bride after witnessing your prowess with a tome," Captain Ronsenburg says. "But I could guess that as much by the tales of your victory over Plegia as I could from the words out of his mouth."

"Ada is owed much of the credit for Ylisse's success," Chrom says. This topic seems to instantly put him ill at ease. "I'm not sure that we could have done it without her quick thinking. We might have lost a lot more."

An odd silence floats down, one that isn't entirely unexpected. Ada glances at Captain Ronsenburg, who smiles politely. Chrom is calm, almost uncomfortably so. Ada watches him but he's quiet.

"Yes," Captain Ronsenburg says. "It's fortunate you have such a gifted tactician. I had been told the story of your escape from Plegia –– that you led the militia to victory in that final battle despite having been perilously ill, when the Plegian forces were well-scattered and both turning on themselves and redoubling their efforts…"

He smiles.

"I have faced many situations like that myself. I respect the odds you overcame."

Ada nods.

"Thank you," she says. She prefers to not think about how poorly that time had been, but given that it was only weeks ago, the memories are still fresh as mud. It weighs heavy on her, and on Chrom, too; he inhales deeply. Tired. Ada adds: "Really, I was nearly lost myself back there. Victory can be credited to everyone's efforts."

The Captain nods.

"And gracious, too," he says. His eyes turn to Chrom, and he bows shortly. "I'll now take my leave to warm up by the fire, if you don't mind. It's a great deal colder here than at home."

Chrom smiles.

"Of course," he says. "I intend to do the same."

Chrom moves off to bid goodbye to the other delegates, and Ada remains politely quiet through the rest, disinterested in even risking any sensitive subjects. 

 

 

—⚜—

 

They walk upstairs without speaking, at least for the first bit. Chrom tracks snowmelt across the floors with his wet boots, the leather soles squeaking with every step, and Ada listens to it in place of conversation. She could fixate on it, if her mind could shut off, and she tries to diagnose the squeaking in lieu of thinking about their current predicament. Are those boots new, unsettled? Is there a fault in their construction? Is there––

Chrom looks at her with a little smile, his hand tightening around hers.

"What did you do today?"

Where to even start? The fact that she'd lazed in bed overlong, itching for something to do but utterly unmotivated to do anything laid out before her? The hour-long bath that had left her skin pruney and wrinkled, Frederick scolding her for languishing even after the second basin of hot water had gone tepid? The lunch she'd picked at, the socialization with the courtly ladies downstairs whose company she'd eschewed? The three books she'd started but hadn't finished? The _four_ rounds of chess she'd soundly whipped Lissa in?

"Nothing much," Ada says. She wonders if she could lean back on having been sick again, but the thought nettles her. She _wants_ something to do. "I wished I'd come hunting."

"Next time," Chrom promises. "When you're fully well."

They walk past the guards at the entrance to Chrom's quarters; the doors are opened with such obedient efficiency that they hardly need break stride at all on approach, and then close behind them again. They're alone in the corridor behind those doors, and Ada notices it almost immediately, as obviously as if it had been heralded. She sees it on Chrom's face too –– the little glance over his shoulder, the little look at her, and finally, the drift of his thumb across her palm. The smile on his mouth grows a little wider, his cheeks pinker.

"What?" she asks.

"Nothing," he says, leading her up the stairs. 

"You can't smile at me like that and then say it's nothing," she says.

Chrom's eyes drop to his feet for a second before moving back to her.

"I was just thinking…" He trails. _Naw, forget it, it's embarrassing. Oh, fine_. "I just think it's kind of nice to be able to just… hold hands like this. Or when you hugged me in the courtyard."

Ada laughs.

"Oh?" she says. "We don't normally do that."

"We don't," Chrom admits. "But it's nice that we do now. I'm glad that we can, that's all."

It's a long way from how they used to be, hands to themselves when under eyesight, frantically pawing each other the second a tent door had closed. It even feels like a step back in some ways, a re-routing of the path they'd seen so well-tread by comrades: budding affections first, _then_ a period of excessive… _excitement._

Ada feels like she fell in lust and love in the wrong order, but she reminds herself just as often that it doesn't matter –– not when Chrom had apparently done the same, anyway.

"Hmm," Ada hums, squeezing his hand, and she abruptly steers him against the wall. She presses him into his own furs and leans up and kisses him, and he pulls her into him like they can hang onto that privacy forever. His lips tug at hers and she feels contented suddenly, like a wash that descends on all the discomfort and madness and grounds her in this moment. His skin, warming within the castle walls. His lips, firm. His tongue tracing her lower lip. She inhales as he exhales _through_ her.

It's so cute how he wants to hold hands. Hug.

"Want to…?" Chrom trails.

Ada nods.

"Been wanting to all day," she says.

"Oh, good," he says. "Me too."

 

—⚜—

 

The doors to his bedroom close and he's on her. It's not entirely unsurprising to her; after all, it's been that way for much of their relationship, and having the privacy of his quarters and a ring on her finger has only made them more reckless, more frantic.

He closes the door so hard it snaps and pushes her up against it, and while she's running a hand through his damp hair, he grips her waistband and forces her pants down without even stopping for the buttons. It drags against her skin, rough and exciting. He presses her back against that door and the wood is cool against her barely-clothed ass.

Chrom gets his hand into her panties to grope her and he announces, proudly: "Gods, you're already wet."

" _Please_ ," she says. "I've been wet since the second floor."

Chrom laughs and despite the boots locking her trousers around her knees, she pulls him in so that his thigh presses between hers. He slips a finger between her folds and she takes his cheeks between her hands to kiss him again. Inhale, exhale. Her spine straightens out.

"Chrom," she says, breaking off, her back sliding against the door. "The armchair. I want to fuck you in the armchair."

She doesn't need to ask. He lets her go, and they lead-pull each other across the room, right to that armchair by the fireplace, the one with the high back and the plush cushions and the  matching footrest –– god, she's been thinking about the leverage he could get with that footrest for a week. They also haven't defiled that armchair yet –– might as well not let it get lonely amongst the other furniture, all the pieces they have claimed one by one, day and night, whenever the time permits.

They're standing over it when she shoves down his coat, leaving the furs at their feet. She steps out of her boots next, shucks off the rest of her pants. Somewhere in the mess of groping hands, he's pulled her breasts out of the neckline of her top, and her nipples sit hard against the hem. There's no time to take off any more clothes completely, not without losing momentum.

"Whoa," Chrom says, but that's all he gets out before Ada has her lips on his again in a crushing kiss, both hands on the buttons on his tunic. She undoes them one by one, practiced and quick, and then yanks the front open just to slip her hands in and palm his chest. His skin his warm, his muscles taut; she feels his abs tense as he bends himself back to her, to not break the kiss even as she pushes him down.

His shoulders hit the back of the armchair, but she remains upright, both feet on the ground as she straddles one of his thighs. For a moment he looks up at her and she down at him, and she delights in the way his bottom lip hangs a little open, the way he inhales deeply and his broad chest expands. His cheeks pinken; the bulge in his pants grows more obvious.

Ada smiles.

"Babe," he says, almost impatient as he is excited. _Get to it before I can't help myself,_ he's saying, but gods, does he squirm sometimes.

"Take it out," she orders. 

Chrom almost fumbles, he moves so fast, and by time he's got himself out of his fly she's already climbing onto his lap, knees wedged between his hips and the overstuffed armrests. She reaches down to unceremoniously slip her panties to the side and Chrom guides his cock into her, eyes fluttering closed as she sinks down.

She's wet, but she's still tight, tight enough that she breathes in sharply as the head threatens to not fit. Bearing down on him drags her mouth open in anticipation, in excitement, and then the head pops in and she slides the rest of the way down slickly. She moans.

Chrom groans, long and heady. Ada reaches for his face, to clutch his cheeks and kiss him breathless as he fills her up, hot and pulsing. His shoulders dig into the cushion and his feet brace the floor and he pushes up into her, so hard she rises on her knees.

"I love you, baby," she murmurs against his mouth, and he has to grip her hips to bring her back down on his cock again, sliding slickly down. She could topple, perched on his lap when he moves like that, but god, he grips her hard enough to leave indents with his fingers. 

Chrom curses under his breath. He lifts her up this time just so she can drop back down, so heavily that she feels the chair shudder a little from the impact, and then he's pushing her up only to pull her down again himself, and it feels wicked to get him this riled up, this eager to fuck. Her toes curl. He thrusts slow but deep, lettings her come all the way down on him before jerking his hips back and forth again.

"Ada," he pants.

She lets him take control, and his grip on her hips almost hurts, his fingers curl in so deep, so needfully. She leans in over him, cheek against his forehead, breasts bobbing in his face; his breath is hard and rasping on her throat.

"I'm gonna––" he cuts himself off, hard. 

Gods, her toes are going numb. She clenches down on him hard, like a spasm, and it feels like her muscles have turned to mush, draped over the tensing, undulating thrust of his hard body. There's a pulse to him, and he picks up the pace; she can feel the strain in him, the physical effort, and she bears down to meet him with increasingly shaky thighs. 

Ada sees stars, and then she feels supernova, sparking, shaking –– a little shriek slips from her, uncontrolled, and Chrom pushes her through it. Words feel impossible; she just shakily keeps riding him, letting him fuck her down on him over and over again, her hands still locked into the fabric of his open tunic. The pulse quickens. His fingers tense even harder into her skin, if that were even possible. She slides and up and down like nothing. Time stretches out and the room slips away –– has it been _hours_?

And then he stills, panting heavily into her throat. She quivers. A stifled little _mmph_ bubbles from him and he kisses her neck, sucking at her skin. He's still deep in her, and she doesn't want to let go of that pressure, not for anything.

"Ada," he murmurs. "I love you too."

She paws at him, drags her palms down to his abs and back up again. She heaves a heady sigh against his hairline; a lock of his hair sticks to her lower lip.

"Divine," she says.

After a few moments of heaving, spent breaths, Ada wills her legs to work and lifts herself up enough that his cock slides from her, slick and wet. When she glances down, she sees the wet mess of his crotch, the blue fabric of his trousers dark and sopping, his tabards scrunched and wrinkled. What a mess. Chrom reaches to finger her, gently probing, and his hand comes away wet, a string of sticky, pearly white come stretched between his fingers. Ada looks down at his hand and thoughtlessly reaches for it, and she takes his fingers in her mouth one by one. She sucks them clean.

Chrom sighs, low and satisfied.

"Love," he says. "You're the best part of my day. You know that?"

As if Ada didn't already feel satisfied herself, that makes her swell with still more pride. She takes her time sucking his last finger clean, lettings her lips tug off his skin languidly. Chrom exhales through his nose when she does. He doesn't blink, not wanting to miss a second of it, and when she finishes, she smiles and watches him as she kisses his fingertips.

"The feeling's pretty mutual," she says.

Chrom just chuckles.

 

—⚜—

 

A spooky thing Ada has learned about living in Chrom's personal quarters for the past few weeks is that the walls seem to have eyes and ears. It plays out for her now, when she and Chrom emerge from his –– their? –– bedroom to go to his private bath, and there's already a hot bath drawn. Ada barely sees the long blue skirts of a castle maid vanishing out the servants' door at the back. She watches that door close.

"Still not used to it?" Chrom asks her as he shucks off his sleeves. He tosses the tunic on the chair. Her eyes follow the line of his silhouette, from his narrow waist to the pronounced curve of his widening back.

"Hmm?" Distracted.

"You're always looking for where they are," he says.

 _They? The servants,_ Ada realizes. _Right._

"No," she says. But she gestures at the bath waiting for them, crossing the tiled floor in already-bare feet. "Do they just listen at the door at us having sex and draw a bath, knowing that's what we'll want?"

Chrom laughs.

"No," he says. "I mean, I _hope_ not, but we have guests in the castle and it's just before dinner, so…"

The delegates from the Valmese nations. _Right._ Ada wonders if her mind will ever catch up with the rest of her, when it will finish meandering over these useless, pendantic little topics. Bless Chrom and his patience, though she's sure he feels the same. Anything to not think about the dark clouds over their heads.

"Usual time," she murmurs, and he nods.

He helps her into the bath, and he follows in himself. The water is piping hot, and their skin pinkens. They're both relatively silent as they bathe, sometimes themselves, sometimes each other. Dinner isn't until later, anyway. There's no need to rush. Just the sound of water splashing, cloths being run, skin squeaking on the sides of the porcelain tub. 

Ada doesn't like that silence much.

"Do you know if anyone else is at dinner other than the ambassadors?" Chrom asks her. Reading her mind.

"Yes," Ada says. "Frederick said Cordelia and Gregor are coming."

"Oh," Chrom says, a little surprised. "I hope she doesn't make it weird."

Ada laughs, and she reaches to wipe his wet hair from his eyes and quickly smooch him while she's this close. She says: "Well, she's married now. It shouldn't be weird at all anymore."

"Listen," Chrom says. "You don't know just how bad it was sometimes. Unless we were talking strategy, she was almost insufferable _._ This one time, she leapt out at me from the bushes wearing this weird mask––"

"Shh," Ada shushes him. "She wasn't that bad. And she and her husband are a good match."

"I bet they are!" Chrom says. "But it was a _weird_ mask."

"Oh, was that the Risen one? Or what was supposed to be a Risen?"

"Yes! That one."

They chatter on like this for a time while bathing, and before the water can even cool all that much, they're back out and across his quarters to return to his bed, bantering on and off as they go. When the conversation dies, both of them seem to feel the need to pick it back up, and once they're dried off and somewhat dressed in clean underthings, they've mysteriously run out of small talk. Chrom flops over in bed while she dries the ends of her hair, where her ponytail had trailed in the water, and the silence persists until she decides she's through with it for one day.

She crawls into the bed and looms over him.

"Are you okay?" Ada asks. "You seem distracted."

She runs her fingers along his scalp. Chrom gives a little sigh, somewhere between her touch and his own upset. Her fingertips dip to trace his ears. He leans into her touch like a cat might, the whole of him relaxing as he sinks against her.

"Just too much to think about," he says. "And it was a long day! I'm tired. Are you tired?"

"I'm fine," Ada says. "I've slept too much, even. Do you want to nap before dinner?"

"Not really," he says, but he's stretched out in her lap like he might do so anyway. He sighs and drags a palm up her leg, and he looks up to her. "I'd like to spend time with you. Er, _more_ time."

"Well, it's not like I'm going anywhere," she says. "Not with you all over me."

He chuckles under his breath, and he gently bowls her over; Ada sinks into the duvet without complaint, and he scoops her into his arms and lays with his head nestled in her armpit.

"Now you're trapped," Chrom says.

She gives a contented sigh and resumes petting his hair. He says nothing, and she says nothing, and then:

"And… I don't know if I can be Exalt," Chrom admits.

Ada raises her head to look at him. He stares back at her — there's a little bit of anxiousness in his eyes, trepidation. Maybe he admits putting it in words already, or at least so bluntly. She pushes down her initial thought that he's being silly.

"Why not?" she asks.

Chrom's gaze slips away from her for a moment. He shakes his head.

"I just don't think I was cut out for it," he says. "I don't know. I'm not Emmeryn."

Her name is a little too blunt to hear, too sore. She feels as though they've been avoiding it for the past week, like the mourning and the grief got to be too much and it all had to be locked away, hidden, lest it continue to hurt.

But it's always going to hurt.

Ada ponders his words for a moment, idly dragging her fingers down the back of his neck.

"No one else in the _world_ is Emmeryn," Ada says. "No one ever could be. But that doesn't mean this halidom won't do well with a different kind of Exalt — _you_."

"I don't think it wants different," he says. "I think it wants her. Everyone's _expecting_ her."

Ada's not sure that it's true in a lot of ways, but she can grant that the population is fickle. Even if the average person can acknowledge the futility of demanding someone who is dead and gone, they could still expect Chrom to rule the way she did. And already in the mere weeks after her death and their escape from Plegia, Ada's seen enough unrest to feel he's right: the word _warmonger_ has become very easy to whisper. No one's wanted to say it, but Ada's seen Frederick cross certain names off lists of people permitted to visit. The new Exalt must be surrounded by support right now, if he is to rule.

She doesn't want Chrom to slip back into silence to brood.

"What happened on the hunt today?" she asks.

"What makes you think...?" he trails, and then he gives a single slow laugh at her expression. "I know. I'm too obvious."

"You are. What happened?"

Chrom pauses, mouth open but utterly wordless. Ada shifts to raise her head more, and he laces his fingers with hers as if she might pull away. (His fingers dig a little where her engagement ring gets in the way.)

"Tell me, lover," she says. She kisses his knuckles. "What happened?"

Chrom shakes his head.

"Nothing serious," he says. "But the lot of them — even just the ambassadors — are a good deal older than I am. Some of the kings and queens they serve have ruled their kingdoms for decades, since before I was even born."

Ada watches his brow furrow, his mouth turn down. 

"Emmeryn wasn't much older than I, but she had such a grace with them," Chrom continues. "And they only mentioned her to offer their condolences, but..."

He trails.

"But what?" Ada asks, petting his hand.

"But I could tell I was someone they'd heard a lot about from Emmeryn," he says. "Probably cute stories, reckless things I'd done... the kinds of things younger siblings are allowed to do, knowing their responsibility is... I really hate to say it, but _optional_."

"You worry they don't take you seriously," Ada says.

"Worse," he says. "I worry they don't realize how much of a fool they're dealing with. They don't realize that all I can do for this halidom is swing a sword."

Ada frowns.

"You're not a fool," she says. "You're an incredibly capable warrior. Don't think you're lesser just because you aren't a philosopher like Emmeryn."

"Like she _was_ ," Chrom says. Ada isn't sure if it's a correction or a reminder to her, or to himself, or both. His eyes grow a little distant. "Gods, Ada, there isn't even a choice in it. I'm Exalt now, at least in theory."

It's true. He is Exalt now, at least in _theory._

"Milord?"

Chrom doesn't look up; he doesn't need to. Ada looks over at Frederick anyway, at his stony, difficult face, and she feels his disapproving gaze settle on her once more. It's like ash on her skin.

"Yes, Frederick?" Chrom says.

"I came to see that you are dressed for dinner," Frederick says, and he strides over to Chrom's wardrobe. He begins extracting pieces –– a cuffed shirt, a collared coat, trousers. He lays them over the folding screen, bows curtly, and then exits again, as quietly as he came.

For a moment Ada and Chrom sit there, two bumps on a log.

"I _do_ have the strength for this, to carry out my duty, to make her proud, to make _you_ proud," Chrom says, finally. "I _know_ it's true, but…"

But? Ada watches the fight leave his eyes, the corners of his mouth grow taut and dissastisfied and even worried.

"It's going to be a very difficult first few weeks."

It's going to be a difficult _life_ for a man like him, Ada decides, but she says nothing as Chrom gently pushes her off so he can go dress.

She just sits there, worrying the underside of his engagement ring with her thumb.

 

 


	2. Compromise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by Emmy ([Twitter](http://twitter.com/chickenbabby), [Tumblr](http://shaburdies.tumblr.com))

.

 

It doesn't take Ada long to realize her evening will end at a reasonable time. By time she and Chrom are dressed and headed back dowstairs, she feels ill at ease, or just plain ill –– one of the miserable two. While she'd recovered well enough since they'd fled Plegia, her near-death experience in the mountains had left her with an anxiousness she knew would take weeks to fully dislodge from her system, like poison. Her presence is a footnote to the announcement of Chrom's arrival to the great hall, but even with most eyes on him, she feels much too looked at. Unless they have blades drawn, she doesn't want the attention. 

Still, she smiles as they descend the stairs. This moment feels far away from everything normal, especially with Chrom in his rich red suit and her in close-fitted black leggings and a silvery tunic. The hardy twills and wools of their travel clothes are worn-in and comfortable compared to these carefully pressed silks, and Ada feels like she's fallen into another world entirely. For an instant, she has no idea how she will ever live in this world for the rest of her days, but it is now inevitable. She wonders if it is the same for Chrom, if this place feels even at all like the world he grew up in.

"I'm going to get stuck in conversations with these people for hours," Chrom murmurs to her. He lays a second hand on hers, bracing.

She looks at his resigned smile and feels a swell of pity.

"You know, I don't mind talking politics," Ada says. "If it takes the pressure off even a bit…"

"I wish I could," he says. He looks ashamed of himself when he adds: "But I can't have you outshine me right now."

It's awful blunt put like that, but they've talked about it before and there's really nothing Ada can fault when she's agreed to bench herself for a while. All these boring days must secure him a level of respect and prove his mettle on the throne. His strategist partner can't draw that into question, especially as a presumed foreigner. Their engagement is only known within the castle thus far, and until the announcement to the public next week, it's difficult to say how welcome she'll be at all.

He gently nudges her in the side, and with a second thought he leans in to whisper in her ear: "Spare yourself and go see our friends. I'll take care of these boring ambassadors."

His lips are so close to the shell of her ear that they nearly graze her skin, tickling at the fine baby hairs and his breath warm. There's an old greedy tension in her pelvic floor when he leans back away. It's as delightful as it is suddenly selfish: _Everything that's happened, and you just keep thinking about getting railed. Pay attention to the politics, fool._

"We'll see each other at dinner?"

"You'll be at my side," he says, and then he lets her go so he can disappear into the waiting crowd of ambassadors. 

They swallow him up like a tadpole in a big pond. Ada lingers at the bottom of the stairs a moment, assessing the situation. She doesn't see Cordelia or Gregor anywhere –– unusual, considering both should tower above the rest. Instead, well-dressed aristocrats mill around in groups of three to five, all dressed their very best, no doubt, to ensure their place in a new Exalt's court. Ada feels comfortable without a gown, able to slip between people without a hoop skirt getting in her way, ignoring the few eyes that turn to her. The conversations that slip by her ears could give her pause –– Lord Chrom this, Lady Emmeryn that –– but she's trying to mind her own business.

The crowds, however, part behind her. Frederick does not slip through the people so easily.

"Pardon me, pardon me–– Ada!" he says, crisply.

She pauses. Frederick collects her immediately, offering his elbow. Ada has half a mind to not take it, but in the heart of court, she doesn't feel like incurring any more wrath than necessary.

"They're by the hearth," he says, leading her. Ada follows, still scanning the crowds as she goes. "Who on earth are you looking for?"

"Lissa didn't come tonight?" she asks.

"No, she's feeling under the weather," Frederick says. _Again,_ Ada thinks. _Not surprising._

He takes her into one of the smaller, more intimate side rooms of the great hall. Cordelia is perched on Gregor's knee when they walk in, but not for long; she rises to her feet to greet them. She pulls Ada into a hug and then holds her out at arm's length, as if to get a better look at her. Ada gets a good look at Cordelia out of it, too. In contrast to her silk dress, Cordelia manages to maintain a perpetually windswept look, as if she's stepped out of a painting, all artfully tousled hair and rosy cheeks. 

(Ada wouldn't be surprised if there _were_ paintings of Cordelia lining the halls of the castle over the coming months, given the nature of the castle painters –– they fall all over themselves to paint the war heroes, and Cordelia had been invaluable in the desert sands, annihilating the Grimleal mage, Charlard; how could they not paint one of the valiant few of them who returned home from the war in Plegia not just victorious, but with their names known for something _other_ than a heroic death?)

"Is it true?" Cordelia asks.

Frederick excuses himself wordlessly.

"Is what true?"

"Are you really engaged?" 

Her voice is earnest, happy. She takes up Ada's hand to see for herself, and her dark eyes fall on the ring immediately.

"Oh, Ada, it's lovely," Cordelia says.

"Thank you," Ada says. Belatedly: "Where did you hear? I haven't left the castle walls since I got here, I have no idea who of our friends knows what."

"Lissa told Maribelle," Cordelia says. She grimaces a little to make a point. "To be honest, I think most of us still stationed in Ylisse know. I wouldn't have said anything so you could still surprise us, but I thought you'd want fair warning that she's planning to help with the… well, _planning_."

"Big mouth," Gregor interjects, a little cheekily. He's standing now, towering over the both of them, and when Cordelia releases Ada's hand, he sweeps in to peck each of her cheeks. "Ada! How good to see you."

Ada feels completely unsurprised. In fact, she nods, gracefully as she can with this information. Best to move along.

"And you two have eloped since," Ada notes.

"Oh! Yes," Cordelia says. She holds out her own hand; her ring is bright gold, a sharp contrast against her cool skin. It has no stone but is instead wrought with tiny filigrees, each no larger than a nailhead. "Gregor made it himself."

"True," Gregor says. "Got paid for a contract with a bit of gold wire, just enough to make Cordelia a nice ring. Easy work, once you've tried it once or twice!"

"You told me you tried three times," Cordelia says, wryly.

"Sure," Gregor chuckles. "Only the best for my wife. Gregor could hammer and chisel and planish for years… if needed."

He digs a knuckle in her side, gentle to tease, and Cordelia makes a face at him that barely stifles her smile.

"How sweet," Ada says. "Well, it's good to see you both! I'm so sorry Chrom can't be here to join us, he's so busy…"

Cordelia nods. Her smile is a little awkward for a moment, as though Chrom's name had stirred something, but it is genuine just the same.

"Well, busy or not," Cordelia says. "It's peacetime again now. I'm sure there will be plenty of time for socials and dinners and summering at estates once Ylisse is settled."

"Yes," Ada agrees. "Certainly."

A servant steps up quietly with a tray of drinks, and each of the three accepts a glass of wine. The thick stem of the glass roemer seems comically small in Gregor's large hand, and he drains the cup of it in mere sips. It doesn't take Ada much longer; most Ylissean wines are aromatic and sweet, but these pre-dinner wines go down easy. Cordelia is slower by half, as though she'd prefer her own cut with water. _Hoping she's pregnant already_ , Ada assesses. Ada considers how much she'll miss uncut wine when the time comes for her.

Ada ponders that any of this is possible at all.

"It's nice that we can do this," Ada says. "Dinner with ambassadors, get married… it doesn't feel like peace yet, but it will."

Cordelia nods.

"We're lucky," she says. "Lucky we get to have it."

"We are," Ada agrees.

"Lucky?" Gregor repeats. "Lucky to be in Ylisse, a quiet little halidom like Ylisse, maybe. Rest of the world? Not so much."

"Well, Ada and I haven't traveled like you have," Cordelia says. "Before Plegia I'd scarcely done more than defend Ylisse's borders, and we're both younger than you. It stands to reason you've seen more."

Gregor makes a bit of a face, a lighthearted scowl.

"Ah, wife, do not remind Gregor how much he has seen by comparison," he says. He reaches to thumb Cordelia's cheek. "Not everyone can age so beautifully."

Cordelia scoffs, but the way she tilts towards him says she's flattered. Aging beautifully might be moving a little too fast, too; though Ada can't be certain of her own age, she is reasonable sure that Cordelia's modest nineteen years cannot yet be quantified as _aged_.

"I'm being serious," Cordelia says. "I haven't known wartime since I was a little girl, and this past year has been terrible. How do we go back to peace knowing we have lost so much?"

"With ease," Gregor says, as if it were that easy. A jovial look lingers on his ruddy face and he drains a second glass of wine as easy as the first. "Accept peace for what peace is. Drink and make merry, wife."

"But we've lost so much," Cordelia repeats.

Gregor shrugs.

"Then lay down that pretty lance, Cordelia," Gregor says. "Then war will never be concern again."

Ada watches the two of them regard each other, feeling a fair bit like she's faded into the crowd. Cordelia frowns and sets down her drink on the mantle, as if it could get in the way of argument.

"I won't lay down my knighthood just because we're at peace," Cordelia says. "What if war begins anew?"

"As long as there are soldiers, war will be had," Gregor replies. "Warriors refuse to lay down arms, even dressed as civilians, going home to wives and children –– do warriors not seek more conquest?"

"Are you saying by continuing to be a knight I'm spoiling for more war?" Cordelia asks, brows knit. "What about you, then? Does a mercenary not profit more from war than a soldier?"

"Mercenary makes profit, beautiful wife," Gregor says. "Warrior produces death."

Ada watches Cordelia heave a great sigh, and Gregor merely shrugs. He raises his glass to her.

"Fortunate we have Ada here to end our wars," Gregor says.

Ada empties her glass.

The dinner bell rings.

 

—⚜—

 

Chrom is not terribly good at banter.

Or perhaps that's not true –– generally speaking, she does enjoy watching him with other people. He gestures with his hands when he talks, just here or there. Or sometimes, when he feels particularly strong about something, he might grip his glass a little tighter, or subconsciously pinch his thumb into his index finger, as though the thought could shake him so physically that he needs to ground himself. There's a glimmer in his eyes when he laughs, a richer sound when he's genuinely amused by something. Ada enjoys those things, sees a charm in him that makes him so magnetic. It's a certain leadership, one she often looks to on the battlefield. She always knows where to find him for it, because Chrom is always at the front, no matter how big the challenge or how shaken he might feel.

But tonight is not his night. Tonight he flounders in conversation –– the sparkle isn't there. The easiness doesn't quite reach what he's saying.

"That's not what I meant," Chrom is saying to Captain Ronsenburg. "I only meant to say that sometimes it's useful to have a militia separate from the royal army."

Ada knows he's nervous, despite the conviction in his voice. He's hardly touched his dinner.

"I'm no stranger to militias, Your Grace," the Captain replies. "Dalmasca too turns to a civilian army when truly necessary, and it has been necessary, particularly in the dispatch of fiends. Disruption of merchant routes and relief to small villages, things of that ilk. But from what I have heard you have employed your militia in warfare in place of the royal army. I wonder what purpose this serves you."

"It can mobilize quickly, handle problems effectively," Chrom says. Ada itches to add, but she sits to Chrom's side, dinner largely unfinished. "If we didn't have a militia, then we wouldn't have been able to muster as quickly as we did when that _dog_ Gangrel attacked Ylisse."

The rest of the table is quiet. Chrom wars the tension on his face, which gives the Captain noteworthy pause. A bit too defensive, Ada thinks, and she places a hand on Chrom's knee as subtly as she can. Chrom doesn't even seem to notice.

"I don't mean to frustrate you, Your Grace," the Captain says. "You're a man who wears his heart on his sleeve, I see. But it's for that reason that I offer counsel in this matter –– some have said you antagonized the Mad King."

Chrom frowns.

"Do you think I don't know how to lead my halidom?" Chrom asks.

Ada opens her mouth to interject, but Frederick catches her eye from Chrom's other side. Frederick leans forward and speaks for her: "Captain Ronsenburg, Lord Chrom may be young, but he has been raised with a future in the military in mind. You need not concern for his ability to lead in war, as unorthodox as his methods may be."

"I have no doubts for his military prowess," the Captain says. "But few kingdoms can be toppled by an upstart young prince and his ambition alone. You must forgive some curiosity from a man like myself who has seen many wars."

 _Upstart,_ Ada thinks. _Not a good choice in words._

"We need not even discuss war at all, as we are here to celebrate peace," Chrom says. And then, a little sharper: "Peace that my sister Emmeryn sacrificed her life to bring."

Captain Ronsenburg pauses, his fork midair, empty of the potato he'd been about to skewer. He doesn't look put off, exactly, but he doesn't look pleased, either. In fact, he almost looks concerned the way his brows furrow and his mouth sets, and Ada isn't sure his concern is entirely unwarranted.

He nods slowly.

"Your sister's sacrifice was very noble," the Captain agrees. "My apologies for having distracted from that."

Chrom just nods, firm and sure, but Ada sees the tension in his jaw. When Captain Ronsenburg looks to her, almost searching for her input, Ada just smiles politely and busies herself with her wine.

Though conversation picks up again momentarily, very little more of import is said, even though dessert. Instead, it's just small talk that drifts in one of Ada's ears and out the other: hunting dogs, warhorses, the seasons by region and funny stories about the minutia of court life. Having never been hunting, bred warhorses, traveled seasonally or lived in court in any of her recent memories, Ada feels like a window dressing for the rest of the evening. War might have been the one subject she might have had much to contribute to, but Chrom has seen handily to that, and for good reason.

After dessert service is drinks in the foyer, and there Captain Ronsenburg catches Ada alone for a moment, when Chrom steps away to fetch another round of wine. Ada looks to him for ulterior motive but sees none reflected on his face, even when he asks her:

"Do you and Lord Chrom intend to rule together?"

Ada feels far too tipsy for a question like that, but with his attention singularly on her, there's no sense in ignoring him. She pulls herself together.

"It remains to be seen," she says. "I don't think Ylisse has need for my talents right now. I'm a tactician, not a political advisor."

"Not until Ylisse goes to war again, perhaps," the Captain says.

"Chrom intends to keep the peace," Ada says, more firmly. "As Emmeryn did before him."

"I have no doubt, but war always comes knocking eventually," Captain Ronsenburg says. "And then what? Does Ylisse depend on you as much as the Exalt?"

She turns to glance at Chrom; he has made it to the nearest servant with a tray of wine, but Frederick has intercepted the glasses. For a moment she watches them talk in hushed tones, utterly inaudible from a distance. Chrom looks exhausted. Frederick looks patient but tense. She can only guess he's coaxing Chrom into staying longer.

"Is your faith in him conditional to whether I do or not?" Ada asks. "And why believe the stories you've heard about me, for that matter?"

"I had faith they were true," Captain Ronsenburg says. "Sir Frederick told me himself, and I am to understand he witnessed the events unfold."

Ada pauses. It seems unlikely to her, if only because she can scarcely imagine Frederick taking an opportunity to praise her, even if it is one of the few things he cannot deny her excellence in. For a moment she regards the Captain with some suspicion, and as she looks at his calm face and sees no reason to doubt him, she shakes her head.

"Even so, I couldn't save Emmeryn any more than he could. You shouldn't judge Chrom in a time like this, when he has hardly been given a chance to grieve. Have you _never_ lost someone dear to you, Captain?"

Surprise passes over the Captain's face.

"I beg your pardon, Lady Ada; I did not mean to offend," he says.

Chrom returns to them then, bearing two glasses of wine and a terse smile. Frederick follows at his heels.

"What did I miss?" he asks.

"Not much," Ada says smoothly, accepting a glass with a smile. She clinks it against the other one and smiles as beatifically as she can muster. "Captain Ronsenburg was just telling me about the first battle he'd ever lost."

Ada watches Captain Ronsenburg's expression adapt to this subtle challenge, this jab to play along. Chrom looks to him with interest, but Frederick, on the other hand, frowns deeply.

"Well," the Captain says with a short laugh, "So we were… I thought maybe it would bring you some comfort, as a young ruler, to know that we all start somewhere."

Ada feels Frederick's eyes on her the rest of the night, right until they decide to retire to bed.

 

—⚜—

 

Ada wakes up with a shiver and a hand dipping between her legs. 

The fire's died over the night, and even with the morning sunlight streaming through the windows, it's chilly in the old castle. Chillier than it should be, though –– Chrom's pulling the blankets off her, and she feels the ripple of cold air chase goosebumps down her skin as he goes. She looks down the valley of her own breasts find Chrom making his way down her body with his mouth. His mouth is warm, lips soft, and his nose bumps her ribs when she breathes in sharply.

He glances up at her as he presses a kiss to her belly; she watches him through her eyelashes.

"You bugger," she murmurs at him, reaching down to ruffle his hair, to smooth it back from his face, "It's _cold._ "

"I'll warm you right up," he says. There's a little plead in his voice, and he cups her firmly, a finger laid against her lips. "I want to eat you out."

Not that she'd ever need convincing in the first place, but Gods, those puppy-dog eyes, his mouth already so close. She lets out a long, already-satisfied sigh.

"Go right ahead," she says.

He shoves the blankets down further, scrunching them up around her calves, and he bends one of her legs back to duck under it. She loves the easy way he moves around her body, he just _handles_ her. She just lays her legs around his shoulders, his bed-warm skin irresistible. And his hands –– oh, gods. He parts her labia with two spread fingers. He doesn't touch yet, though, doesn't get any closer than just breathing on her, and Ada finds herself breathing in sharply, waiting, fingers still running through his hair.

And then there's a sharp knock at the door.

"Milord," Frederick says, muffled by two inches of solid wood.

Chrom hangs his head, forehead against her pubic bone. Ada gives the door a sour look on his behalf and reaches for the blankets, which she hauls over both of them unceremoniously, just in case.

"We're busy," she calls.

"VERY busy," Chrom adds. "Do not open that door."

"I shall be back in two minutes, then," Frederick calls. He opens the door just a crack regardless, and Ada feels herself grow drier than the damned endless sands of Plegia at the mere thought of it opening any further.

"Stop–– half an hour!" Chrom calls, sitting upright.

"My apologies, but you have breakfast in fifteen minutes," Frederick replies. "And we must go over your schedule for the day. Two minutes."

He closes the door again with a snap and Chrom whips off the blanket tenting him like it has personally wronged him. For a moment Ada just sits there, contemplating how much she'd like to wring Frederick's head from his shoulders, or more realistically, what could possibly be done to keep Frederick in his own damned room a little longer each morning. Chrom just sets to dressing, stepping into trousers like he's trying to kick them. Ada's not sure she's ever seen someone dress with so much frustration.

"I can't wait until these damned delegates go," Chrom says.

The irritation drips off his voice. Ada sits perched on the edge of the bed, pondering ways she could help him off of the battlefield, but she comes up empty. She's been coming up empty since they got back, and nothing has come to her even with all the desperation in the world to think of something.

"Hey," Ada says. "Hey. Come here."

Chrom sighs, eyes still on his buttons, and she pushes her way to him. Ada feels light-headed when suddenly vertical, and she's not sure if it's residual dizziness from the night before or Chrom fingering her awake, but he takes her naked in his arms and holds her close.

"I know you're frustrated," she says, pressing a little kiss against his collarbone. "I know. But it's not too much longer for this visit, right? And there's no dinner tonight to my recollection, so we'll have a quiet, private dinner in our room."

"I hope so," he says. "I really just want to do nothing for at least one day. Stay in bed with you."

"I know," she says. It feels like all she can repeat: _I know, I hear you, I'm here with you, I feel it too._ "Baby, just get through today, and we'll figure out the next later on."

She buttons his top button and gives him another quick kiss.

"Maybe tonight we can sit on the balcony wrapped up in blankets and look at the stars," she says.

"I'd like that," he says. He seems to realize her nakedness and he reaches for her housecoat, draping it around her.

"Good. That's what we'll do."

He nods and breathes a long sigh of relief.

That's when Frederick returns, clearly not off to a good start in his own day. Despite that, he is relatively calm –– calmer than Ada would be if it were her job to ruin what precious little privacy her charges had. Calm does not mean happy, however. Not even remotely.

"Finally up, I see," he says. "That's good."

"Thanks for that," Ada says. "Do you mind, though?"

"With the two of you like cats in heat, I have honestly considered wearing a cow bell in order to mitigate risk of––" Frederick cuts himself off there, and then draws himself up a little straighter, more _contained_. "Risk of _breeching milord's privacy_."

"I'm going to ignore that you just said that," Chrom says, bluntly. 

"We can discuss your schedule, then," Frederick replies.

"About that –– Listen. I appreciate that you're trying to help, Frederick, but I can manage on my own. My sister didn't have someone preparing notes for her or making sure she got everywhere on time."

Frederick raises his eyebrows.

"Milord," Frederick starts. "If I may––"

"I really just need you to let me stand on my own on this," Chrom insists. "Stay here today, look after Lissa and Ada, get the castle back in order, whatever it is you want to do to be useful. But I need to handle Ylisse."

Frederick is frozen, the very breath caught in his throat; any lightheartedness he had tried to maintain with these little jabs, any thought he might have had to dissuade Chrom's frustrations, all of that vanishes. He drops his eyes.

"Yes, milord."

"Thank you," Chrom says, clipped. He turns to Ada and presses a quick kiss to her cheek. "I'll see you later for our date. Frederick, I'll go over your schedule downstairs."

Off they both go.

 _Now what?_ Ada wonders.

She looks at Chrom's bed, the covers dissheveled but no doubt still body-warmed. And that, she decides, is as good of an option as any.

 

—⚜—

 

Frederick returns to her later with a mild vengeance, Mother Hen-style. 

"Up," Frederick says. "It's been half an hour since he left and you are still in bed. Up, up, up."

"Doesn't Lissa need you?" Ada asks him from her nest in the covers, Chrom's pillow scrunched under her chin, a book held half-heartedly. She's been re-reading the same page just to digest it, but it doesn't seem to stick.

"Lady Lissa is already dressed and eating," he says. 

Probably weeping into her pastries, too, Ada figures. And for her own fate, Ada doesn't much appreciate being treated like a spoiled child, but she's not sure she has an argument in her repetoire for being _this_ lazy. She sighs at him and hauls herself from bed, leaving him to make up the covers while she dresses.

"Fine," she says, hugging her housecoat around her as she makes for the dressing screen. The stone floor is cold on the balls of her feet and she doesn't even own proper slippers yet. "Where'd you move my trousers?"

Frederick just casts a longing look at the petticoats and long dresses he'd had laid out on the lounger, as if weeks of increasingly frilly and voluminous options might have ever convinced her instead of simply driving her further off. When has she ever expressed interested in fashion belonging to the likes of Lissa and Maribelle? She has to commend his perseverence, however –– maybe _someday_ she might roll out of bed and want to wear something that prevents her from moving through doorways, or give up reading and chess in favour of eating cream cakes and cherries over a gambling board with ivory chips, and Frederick will be ready that very morning.

It's not this morning, however. With his options woefully unsatisfying, Ada rummages through the wardrobe to find herself something suitable from the meager selection that doesn't offend her mobility. (It seems to her there's a great number of things she has yet to recieve from the castle tailors, or perhaps a great number of things Frederick has declined to arrange.) She eventually settles a pair of trousers, a chemise and a linen bodice. The chemise is more blousy than she'd like, and the bodice more stiff, but it's an option. _Compromise_. Frederick appraises her choice in tops but doesn't push further on the men's trousers. _Compromise._

"I'm thinking I'll go to the training grounds today," Ada says, blindly attempting to tie her bodice behind her. "Care to spar with me?"

"Neither you nor I will spar today," Frederick says. He watches her continue to fumble for a moment before he strides over her to her and gestures for her to turn. "Let me do that."

She turns, and he starts hooking his fingers in the crosses of her bodice ties, tugging tighter here and there. As her breasts sit needlessly high, she regrets this compromise immediately. Maybe she'll pull a tunic overtop later.

"And why is that?"

"Because as much as I would love to hone your skills with a blade, Ada, you have tea with Maribelle and Lissa."

"Since when?" Not that she minds in theory, but she still hasn't grown used to this idea that her time is not her own. Besides, she had lunch with the two of them just two days ago. Surely they haven't amassed anything new to talk about since.

"Since they arranged it with me," Frederick replies. "What better reason do you need to meet with your soon-to-be sister-in-law?"

"None, as I love Lissa," Ada says. She gives a little _oof_ as he pulls the bodice laces tight, quite taught across her spine. Any tighter and she'll be cross. "You don't have to go so tight–– but no, it's the principle of it, Frederick. Don't you have anything better to do than plan my day?"

Frederick sighs. For a moment he doesn't reply, which Ada takes to be his own way to tell her that she's asked something stupid, something not even worth dignifying with a response. Maybe she has; Chrom has no interest in his overseeing, either. She watches him over her shoulder with a tension in her jaw, as if she's forgotten how to hold her own mouth neutrally, and he finally shakes his head.

"Because you don't just set out to marry a prince and then lounge around doing whatever you please," he says. "And _these_ times, times of _great_ change, are not the time to wow this halidom with your new ideas of what an Exalt's bride does."

"I'm not _just_ his bride," Ada replies. She didn't _set out_ for this either. "I'm a tactician. I need stimulation, Frederick."

"Yes, and it will get you in trouble," Frederick warns. "And worse, it will get Lord Chrom in trouble."

"How on earth am I going to get him in trouble?" Ada asks.

" _Surely_ you must know by now, since you are fiancée to him," Frederick says. She doesn't like that word in his mouth ––  _fiancée_. He pinches it between his lips like something unsavoury. He is still holding onto her, and he ties the ends of her bodice with a snap to his grip; she feels his thick fingers tweak and re-tweak the knot until it sits level. Finally, he says: "Lord Chrom is easily influenced."

Ada levels Frederick with a look. 

"So what? If I do what I like, he's going to start missing out on his new obligations as Exalt to do what he likes, too?"

"Yes," Frederick says.

"I wouldn't mislead him like that."

Frederick is silent. Ada feels frustration bubble in her. What? Hasn't she done enough to earn his trust? Didn't she try her damnest to save his liege, to save Ylisse's shining, golden sun? Didn't she also weep at the loss of a future sister, didn't she feel everyone's pain as if it were her own, and struggle to protect everyone? Didn't she––

No, there's no sense in dwelling on that topic, not now. But even so, forget convincing him of any of that.

"Do you think I _don't_ know him?" Ada asks.

"Not as well as I," Frederick replies.

"Then why are you taking this so personally? I'm not claiming to know him _better_ ," Ada says. "Just _differently._ I'm now his fiancée and you're..."

She trails. He's what? Chrom is there, and Frederick is always two steps behind. No questions asked.

"I am what?" Frederick asks.

"You're not _just_ in his service," Ada says. "You care about him even beyond duty, don't you?"

"I am his _knight_ ," Frederick supplies for her, voice firm. There is no negotiation there. "My concerns for him are the concerns of the halidom. My care for him, the care for an entire realm."

"And as a person?" Ada demands.

"Excuse me?"

At the look on his face, she suddenly feels she has been wrong. To some degree she has always thought Frederick's defensiveness is best explained as a sense of paternal pride. But she has never asked him, and she knows she hasn't because to be paternal to one's charge doesn't fit the narrative of court. And if she's honest with herself, her understanding of court is staunchly limited.

"If you opposed our marriage solely for political reasons, I'd–– I'd _understand_ ," Ada replies. "I truly would. It's definitely not an ideal match for a prince—"

"For an Exalt," Frederick interjects. "Worse still."

Ada almost flinches. This is far from news to her, but she's never dared speak it aloud herself, let alone had it flung at her. Frederick is calm, effortless. 

"So you think it's a bad idea," she says. "But he's still a man, and you care for him deeply, and though you would never deny him what he wants, you do oppose me on a personal level. Surely there's some reason for that beyond duty, some explanation."

It feels childish to demand _why don't you like me?_ She thinks that could wound her, to confess to some need to be liked, some desire to be welcome in this court where nothing has felt comfortable. She has nothing without Chrom and her friends in the Shepherds, after all. Frederick's rejection isn't just a threat to that, it's a reminder that even amongst the only people she has, there is loneliness.

"There is nothing beyond duty," Frederick says. "That isn't to say Lord Chrom does not hold me in high regard, as I hold him, but it _is_ about duty, and I will be dutiful to him for the remainder of my days."

Ada looks up at him, her tongue trapped against the roof of her mouth. She feels as though she has been stabbed, the pressure on her ribs actually a knife between them.

"That you don't understand that tells me quite a bit about where you came from, and who you are."

There's a knock at the door. The knife feels twisted.

"That would be Maribelle," Frederick says, striding away without even a moment's pause. 

Ada inhales deeply.

 

—⚜—

 

Maribelle stands in the doorway holding a white leather folder. Ada feels an immediate sense of wariness for that folder, as if it might contain some terrible truth that will undo her. The steward behind her seems equally burdened; he is attempting to balance an unnecessarily large platter of cake samples on one hand and a whole sheaf of folders under the other arm. Ada knows exactly what this is, and she dreads it immediately.

"What is all this?" Ada asks anyway, as if ignorance could save her.

"Everything you need to plan a wedding!" Maribelle says proudly. "I thought I'd see how you're doing and offer some assistance. And _congratulations_ , by the by. I knew Lord Chrom had it in him."

"Oh," Ada says, smiling, but she feels herself freezing. "Well, thank you, but I think I've got a handle on it. Also, it's still morning, I don't think I can stomach cake right now."

"Oh! That's wonderful," Maribelle replies, forgetting the cake immediately. "I should have expected that — I suppose if a tactician can orchestrate a battlefield, a wedding shan't be much of a challenge. I don't know why I thought you hadn't even started."

There's a glitter to her voice that makes Ada's hair stand on end.

"It's only been a few weeks," Ada says.

"Plenty of time for a strategist of your merit," Frederick chimes in, possibly the most pleasant Ada has heard him sound in weeks. "Why don't you show Lady Maribelle what you've assembled thus far?"

"Yes, please!" Maribelle says. 

Ada turns to look at him, and free of Maribelle's line of sight, she offers him the dirtiest look she can muster. Frederick merely smiles. That is precisely when Ada knows she has been outmanoevered, at least for the moment.

"I'll arrange tea to go with that cake," Frederick says, quite cheerfully, and he excuses himself to rally the servants. Even aside from the creaking feeling in her ribs, Ada feels wholly comfortable in her assumption that Frederick is a wicked man to cross. 

Maribelle bustles over to the table and lays down her single leather folder, the steward behind her following suite. All the little cake plates rattle when he sets down the tray, as if all the china would tremble at the notion of being in sudden competition. Ada drifts behind Maribelle, wondering how well she could improvise a wedding. Alternately, she wonders how well Maribelle's memory serves her — Ada would hate to have to stick to said improvised wedding sometime down the line.

"It looks like you've planned your own," Ada says. 

"Oh, of course, darling, but _these_ are just ideas I put together for _you_ ," she says.

"I didn't know you were getting married," Ada says, as though such a thing could really distract Maribelle's focus. "Or that you were even engaged..."

Maribelle shrugs, effortlessly dramatic. 

"I'm not!" she says. "I just want to be ready when I am."

Ada finds herself looking at her ring again, at its foreignness — could she be any further from this manicured, bouncy-haired mademoiselle? Ada thinks she has too much on her mind to think about weddings, and she thinks of that sober conversation she'd had with Chrom on the way back to Ylisse — _can you wait? I think the halidom needs time to heal, I think there's too much on my shoulders to think about a wedding_ —

Ada feels a sudden tiredness.

"Maribelle," she says. "You drew all of this up for me?"

Maribelle looks at her like she's grown a second head, her pink lips drawn into a smile.

"Well, who else could all this be for?" she laughs. "Of course it's for you. It's a big affair, a royal wedding, especially with all the tragedies as of late... no woman could plan it alone."

"Will that make the people happy?" Ada asks. She thought she'd be contributing to peace in so many other ways. "Emmeryn's dead and the halidom is recovering from war on its borders, and the people want a wedding?"

Maribelle blinks at her.

"What are you trying to say, Ada?" Maribelle asks.

"I'm not saying anything," Ada replies. "I'm asking. Will a wedding make people feel any more secure?"

Maribelle pauses, and she draws herself up a little taller — not by much, given she is a petite little woman to begin with. Her expression grows very grave.

"No, Ada," she says. "It won't."

"Then it really just feels like a wedding is slapping a whole lot of happiness on a grieving people."

"It very much is. But sometimes that's just how things are," Maribelle says. She reaches for Ada's hand and takes it between both of her own. "It's good to have something to keep your mind off of things, both for the people and ourselves."

Ada looks at Maribelle's pristine white glove, and then her earnest, sober face.

"Well, then," Ada says. "I'm glad to have your help."

"Good!" Maribelle purrs. "And don't think this is too far from the art of war. Assembling a seating arrangement is no different from arranging soldiers on a battlefield, you know."

"Keep you as far away from Lord Virion as possible," Ada remarks. "Got it."

Maribelle bursts out laughing, and at that, at least, Ada hopes this won't be so bad.

 


	3. Dessert

.

 

 

 

Sometime around lunch, when Ada has tried enough cakes for a lifetime's fill and she has perfected co-opting Maribelle's ideas as if they were her own, Maribelle announces they stop with the wedding plans at once. They must, she insists, see to Lissa.

"She'll mope all day if we don't," Maribelle says, pointedly. "We'll take our tea in her room. See if that perks her up a little bit."

So after Ada dons a proper long-sleeved tunic and a capelet for warmth, the two of them head down the long hall connecting Chrom's quarters with Lissa's. There is no further sign of Frederick, much to Ada's relief, and she suspects that is for the best, if both of them are to survive this time with sanity intact. 

When they arrive, Lissa's quarters are uncharacteristically dark. Though Ada has only been there a few times before, she had previously known them as the sunniest in the castle, a modest collection of little rooms still decorated like a little girl's room would be. Lace and ribbons and frills, whitewashed furniture with fluffy blue linens, and long sheer curtains on all the windows. Now, however, stewards are packing things away. No more softness, and no more little girl. Maribelle looks upon it all with a shake of her head.

"It will all be back up in a week's time," Maribelle confides to Ada. "She does this whenever she's sad. One time, when we were younger, I gave her favourite doll a haircut and she did the same thing."

 _Not exactly the same,_ Ada thinks, but Maribelle knows that. It's just easier to pretend this is normal.

The two of them find Lissa sprawled on her bed, a pillow tented over her head, a tiny book on her chest as though she couldn't even muster the energy to hold it aloft. Lissa hardly moves when they enter, just her eyes roving over.

"Hey," Lissa says, and she sets down the book. "Come to wallow with me?"

"Absolutely not," Maribelle says. She immediately busies herself with opening the drapes a little wider; the sun is blinding, reflecting off of all the snow-covered rooftops, chasing the gloom from every nook and cranny of the room.

"Maybe a little," Ada says, laying down at Lissa's side. "What are you reading?"

Lissa sighs.

"Etiquette," she says, wearily. 

"Not your usual fare."

"It isn't! It's sooo boring," Lissa moans. She sets it aside entirely and looks at Ada plainly. Her big round eyes are reddened, puffy. "I'm not cut out for that stuff."

"So why read it?" Ada asks.

Lissa shrugs. That's all anyone can do now – shrug, as if it might shake off the collective listlessness, the _why bother_ of it all. What makes sense in a world where beloved sisters fall from the sky, never to be seen again? Why bother, indeed?

"Fair enough," Ada says.

"Ada told me you didn't go to dinner last night, darling," Maribelle says. She sits on the edge of the bed and leans in brush the hair from Lissa's face, taming the bangs that curl in around her cheeks. "Still not feeling up to it?"

"Not really," Lissa says. She breathes a heavy sigh and turns her eyes to Ada again. "Was it bad?"

"Pretty terrible," Ada admits. "The ambassadors are fine but it's just not a good time. Nobody's in the mood to celebrate anything much."

"Hmm! When I saw Chrom this morning he said it wasn't too bad," Lissa says.

Ada shrugs, too. Lissa knows as well as she does that it's a brave face. Lissa sits up finally, tossing her pillow and book aside, and despite her relatively dry eyes she forces back a loud sniffle.

"I feel like I've hardly seen him in a week," Lissa says. "I wonder if I make him feel sadder."

"Oh, no, Lissa dear," Maribelle says, immediately. "Hardly any of us have seen him much since we got back, I'm sure even Ada could say the same if they didn't share a bed. He's just very busy, that's all. I've stepped in to court when they've had need of me; things are rather ugly in there."

"Well, there must be _something_ _I_ could be doing to help," Lissa says. "Instead of just sitting here, moping, sobbing, all _snotty_! I can't believe I'm so––"

She sniffles again, as if to make a point, and then she picks up the discarded pillow and crams it against her own face to holler directly into it. While she carries on with that, Ada glances to Maribelle, who is already gazing her way, waiting to exchange a tired look.

"Lissa darling," Maribelle croons. "As much as everyone wants to feel helpful right now, these things just take time."

Lissa drops the pillow and gives Maribelle a plainative look.

"It feels like it's going to be this way forever," she says. "I was thinking before…"

A few tears drop.

"I was thinking I was glad I don't remember our parents dying," she says. She blubbers on: "B-because if I ever have to feel this hurt all–– all over again, I don't–– I don't think I could handle it!"

Maribelle opens her arms and Lissa settles right into them, face buried into the soft pink silks of Maribelle's blouse. Ada watches, pityingly, though in that moment she feels she very much relates. After all –– as much as it hurts, she's glad she doesn't remember ever losing anyone, either.

 

—⚜—

 

By time a lunch of little sandwiches and biscuits and cured meats are set out and prepared for the trio, Maribelle has cajoled Lissa into some sense of dignity, her messy pigtails as tamed as they'll ever be and her delicate (pardon the thought) figure laced into a crisply ironed overdress. The three of them assemble around the little table, the smooth white linen tablecloth laden down with more nice china, and Lissa manages a giggle when she picks up her own teacup to find a flower inside.

"What's this? A dried flower?" she exclaims. She plucks it out between her fingers, holding it up. "It looks like a squid crawled up on land and shrivelled up!"

"It's a tea, actually," Maribelle says, curtly. "One of the ambassadors brought it as a gift. His name is Tulip; a fitting name for a man from a nation of flower merchants. He's quite lovely."

Ada prods at her own dried flower and remarks, just as dryly: "Has Maribelle found her match?"

"Hush," Maribelle scolds. She takes the teapot of hot water with one hand and gestures at the two of them to put their flowers back where they belong, which they promptly do. Maribelle pours each a cup and the three of them lean in to watch their own cups.

Ada watches her flower unfurl, little grey-green leaves unfolding themselves like arms stretching in the morning warmth, the flowers themselves opening to colourful balls of pink and yellow. Hers unfurls so high it pokes out of the water, which slowly becomes tinted a yellowy-brown which Ada feels conflicted about describing as either tea or swamp-water. 

"Pretty," Lissa remarks. She takes a tentative sip and makes a face. "Tastes exactly like I thought."

"How do I drink this without that _thing_ touching my mouth?" Ada remarks.

"Both of you are impossible!" Maribelle sighs.

Lissa giggles, and despite earlier protests, drinks anyway. Ada elects to as well, and though she is decidedly against the notion of this flower bobbing up against her lips, it doesn't taste terrible. Tolerable, at the very least, but she imagines she'll be sticking to regular tea when possible.

And then Ada spies Frederick looming at the door, quiet as can be, just watching the three of them. She lifts her chin and waves at him quite deliberately, and he merely turns away and departs again, as if satisfied with her sociability. Lissa and Maribelle both turn to look at who she is waving at, but all they see is Frederick's vanishing back.

"Frederick!" Lissa calls.

But he's gone.

Lissa purses her lips.

"What's gotten into him?" Maribelle asks.

"Sulking," Ada says.

She tells the two of them about the events of the morning, and Lissa sighs, chin in her hands and both elbows on the table.

"It bothers me that he's so rude to you sometimes!" Lissa says.

"This isn't unsual for him," Ada says. "Sometimes he's little more playful about it, at least, but he's always been distrustful of me."

Maribelle shakes her head.

"It's inappropriate, if you ask me," Maribelle says. "If I had such a surly steward, I'd send him away in a heartbeat." She gestures with her hand as if she could sweep him right out the door.

"He's not a steward," Ada says. "He's a knight. It's actually worse that way."

"It _is_ a touch embarrassing that he acts below his station," Maribelle says.

"No, it's worse because this way when he acts like a complete lunatic it's seen as––" Lissa adopts a fascimile of Frederick's voice, haughty and stern "–– _exemplary dedication, above and beyond his station."_

Ada snorts. Maribelle sighs.

"But seriously, though," Lissa says. "And don't take offense to this, but my brother deserves a smack upside the head for letting him get away with it."

Ada frowns suddenly; it's one of those statements that immediate slides under her skin, not uncomfortably but undeniably there.

"What do you mean?" Ada asks.

"He should be sticking up for you," Lissa says.

"He has a lot on his plate, Lissa," Ada says. "I'm not about to make trouble by pushing a rift between him and Frederick."

"Well, that doesn't mean it's okay for Frederick to treat you like that," Lissa says. "We're _all_ sad, we're all grieving. What's his business being sadder than the rest of us and using it as a chance to be mean?"

Ada's first instinct to agree, but she's also not very inclined to tangle with Frederick feeling sad, not when he himself had made a fuss about being motivated by duty and duty alone. What place does sadness have in the life of a man who claims to care only about the abstract, the halidom and the people confined in his lord? She isn't sure. Even so, she's not sure about putting Frederick's grief first when he doesn't permit his lord a moment to tangle with his own. That, and she'll trouble Chrom over her quarrel with Frederick when he has _time_ for those petty concerns, as irritating as it is in the interim. 

"I'll address it myself, Lissa," Ada says.

"He hasn't listened to you for months," Lissa argues.

"That's just because he doesn't like Chrom and I being together," Ada says. "I think he liked me more the very first minute we met, and that's saying something."

"Ada, darling, that's so dramatic," Maribelle sighs. "Listen –– do you think he would dote on you the way he does you and Chrom if he did not respect you?"

Ada sets her teacup down with a clink and levels Maribelle with a firm look.

"Sorry, but no," Ada says. "You can't argue that his doting on me is dutiful and then turn around and dismiss his attitude, which is decidedly undutiful."

Maribelle frowns, her pretty face notably put-off.

"That's just how things work around here."

"That's ridiculous."

"I shan't argue with you. Change of subject," Maribelle says, diplomatically. "Lissa! I hear that handsome but _rude_ swordsman is coming to visit you next month. Is this _true?_ "

Lissa flushes clear up to hairline and protests effusively: "He's coming as _envoy_ to see _Chrom!"_

Ada has felt less relief when ducking under swung blades, but that's Maribelle, sword _and_ saviour.

 

—⚜—

 

Frederick collects her early so she can dress for dinner, and Ada goes with pleasure, knowing Chrom will be finished for the day by time she is finished. The walk back is brisk and in silence –– a fact that unnerves Ada about as much as it comforts her. 

Ada looks up at Frederick while he is staring straight ahead of them. He is unblinking, his sharp brow knitted tighter than usual, and his collar and cuffs are starched so stiffly she thinks they would feel like wood planking. He's antsy. 

While she has seen Frederick in tears of joy before, Ada wonders what sadness would even look like on him. Would he hang his shoulders like Chrom does, wear a sense of being so tired that he doesn't have enough energy for himself, let alone others? Would he eschew contact like Lissa, or skip dinners in favour of wasting away? What of the other Shepherds, many of whom who have not given up training despite the peacetime, as if a stronger swordarm or better footwork could prevent such a thing from happening again?

Does he wish he could grieve? Does duty grip him so tightly?

She wonders what it is, this business of being noble, that makes people bury themselves. She wonders if she'll ever understand it someday –– this _duty first, self second_ that grips Frederick as it grips the rest of the household. It scares her to think Chrom might be like them at the end of the day, and end up more patrician than populist. That man, she thinks, would not be the man she fell in love with.

Frederick turns to look at her, rather abruptly. Perhaps her gaze lingered too long.

"Yes?"

"I can feel you thinking something," she says.

Frederick shakes his head.

"Just pondering the schedule, lady," he says. _Lady._ That feels like a compromise, too.

Ada purses her lips for a second. She ponders what Maribelle had said.

"I was thinking," she asks. "With Emmeryn's death, I'd understand if you wanted to take time off for yourself. I know it isn't my place to give you that, but Chrom––"

"No, thank you," Frederick says, cutting her off. _Don't insult me_ , he could say.

Ada turns her eyes straight ahead of them. Well, no one can tell her she hasn't tried.

They continue back to Chrom's quarters in silence.

When they get back to the room, Ada washes up while Frederick bustles around the room looking for anything that is even a hair out of place.

"Could I perhaps convince you to wear a dress?" Frederick asks. "Much as you don't enjoy them, I'm quite certain that Lord Chrom would be very happy to see."

Ada appraises the dress laid out on the chaise longue. (Gods, she spends so much time declining dresses these days.) The rest modest enough, as if she might be more easily swayed by simple linens over some water taffeta or an embroidered silk, and she tells herself Frederick is trying to ease her into this –– it's better, she thinks, than deciding he is deliberately trying to _push_ her.

"Thank you," she says. "But I'll dress myself."

"What should I get out for you, then?" Frederick asks.

Ada turns to look at him, the corner of her mouth twisting.

"Ah," he says. The pink tinge to his cheeks could be a flush, or it could be the sun setting through the balcony windows. Even so, he picks up the dress and folds it over his arm. When Ada keeps her eyes on him, he says: "Well, I don't think the tailors can put together something new or interesting at this short notice."

"Put the thought from your mind," Ada says. "Why don't you retire for the night? Someone will be by with dinner when it's ready."

"Yes, Ada, they'll bring dinner up for the both of you shortly," he confirms. "But I'll linger a while longer, in case milord returns."

Ada supposes she'll be keeping her trousers on a little longer, then, though she does ditch the bodice. Frederick goes and stands by the balcony doors, gazing out again though there is no one coming on the horizon.

Dinner arrives shortly thereafter, black chicken stuffed with chestnuts, carrots and prunes, and red peppers stuffed to bursting with onion and cheese. Hardly the most luxurious thing Ada has eaten all week, what with the ambassadors visiting, but still far from the fare served on the war trail. Exotic silky chickens gifted to Ylisse would never find room next to venison, bear and pheasant in the larder.

Ada watches a servant carve the chicken and arrange servings on the two placesettings, and Frederick puts her thoughts to words:

"Would you like me to see where he is?"

"Oh, I'm sure he's on his way," Ada says. 

But ten minutes later, when the chicken and peppers aren't steaming anymore, she begins to wonder.

"He's normally punctual," Ada says.

Frederick raises his eyebrows briefly, a little look that screams _told you so_ , and Ada leaves him to his little prizeless victory. It doesn't keep very well, either, and save for a sigh or two out of Frederick the two of them keep silent. Ada ponders going to find Chrom herself, grabbing him by his lapels and hauling him out of whatever engagement is holding him hostage, but she just as quickly realizes it wouldn't do either of them well to nag him for dinner in front of the ambassadors. This isn't a battlefield. She can't just stick a lightning bolt between the lungs of what gets in the way of her objective.

"I'm going to retire for the night," Frederick says, finally, tearing himself away from his view of the balcony. 

"Alright," Ada says. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

Ultimately, Chrom misses their dinner. When he's not there another half hour later and the food seems likely to go to waste, Ada decides that she'll just eat with or without him. She dimisses the servants; she has poured her own glass before and a ring on her finger has not deprived her of that ability, so alone it is. She can make the best of it. After all, she can count it as a very rare moment she has had alone in the entire span of her memory. When they haven't been actively at war or on the march, Ada has devoted much of her free time to Chrom.

(Not that she's had much free time with Chrom as of late, though.)

So her missing lover aside, it is tolerable to be alone, even if in an odd way simple folk like herself could only dream of. She wears only a housecoat, and she sits with her bare legs folded up on the chair, the front of the housecoat open so that her breasts dare peek out, occasionally brushing the table's edge. That silly housecoat is made of silks more expensive than most of Ylisse's peasants could ever hope to afford in a year's time, she's sure. She gets to eat off a fine metal plate instead of a wooden board in the barracks, and she can have a candle to herself, close enough that she can read a book at the side of her dinner courtesy the cutlery, which is an even rarer luxury. No chicken grease on her books, certainly not. 

Alas, whenever she hears a noise that she thinks might be Chrom, and time and time again, she finds her aloneness unchallenged. Bizarre for him to not have sent word, she thinks, but then again, Frederick likely hasn't seen him at all today, and who else would Chrom rely on for such personal matters?

When she finishes up eating, the sun has well set, and the candle burns too low to keep reading much longer. It isn't until she's contemplating just climbing into bed that she hears someone at the door, and she sits up straight and lifts her gaze.

"Oh," says Chrom, rather relieved. "I was worried you'd have gone to sleep already."

"Not until you get back," she says, closing her book. "No one told me you were going to be late."

Chrom pauses.

"I should have sent word with someone," he says. "I'm sorry."

"Frederick wasn't with you today."

"Right," Chrom says, kicking off his boots. "You could have come find me, you know. You're not locked up in this tower."

Neither of them really seem to know what to make of that; Ada isn't sure if it's worth an argument, but Chrom's hangdog look doesn't reach as far as regret, either. He sighs, stripping himself of his cloak, eyes low.

"Are you mad?" he asks.

"No, I just… thought we were having dinner," she says. _Patience,_ she tells herself. She has to be patient with this, because it's not the life either of them want for each other. "Are you?"

"Why would I be mad?" he asks.

"You were pretty upset this morning," she says.

Chrom pauses once more, still lingering by the door. Her heart swells for him, and she can't pretend she's fine with this standoffish space, this coolness, so she rises from her chair and crosses the room to him. She reaches for his hands, and his eyes rove down the visible strip of flesh between the front edges of her robe. He deftly dodges her hands in favour of pulling her into his arms, his hands slipping to her cheeks to cup her face.

"Not at you," he says, and he delivers a swift kiss to her lips. "I'm not mad at you. I'm just sorry I ruined dinner."

"And I'm sorry for not just coming to find you," she says. He thumbs her cheeks and she clutches his wrists to keep him there, faces close. "Are you hungry? We can get you some dinner and continue our evening as planned. Sit out under the stars."

Chrom breathes deep, heavy relief.

"I'm a little hungry," he says.

"Well," she says. "There's still dessert."

He glances at the table over her shoulder, and she turns to look with him. Ada looks at the lonely table, bare of the slightest trace of sweets or cakes or tarts, and then back at him just in time to see the realization dawn on his face. He pulls her in close enough to bow her back, lips almost against her ear. Ada lays her arms around his neck, near-ticklish at the proximity of his breath. His hands tighten on her waist, feeling how naked she is under the housecoat. His belt buckle digs into the bowl of her pelvis, her bare toes against his stockinged feet.

"Are _you_ dessert?" he asks, hushed voice betrayed by delight.

Ada just grins against his cheek.

 

—⚜—

 

Dessert is taken in the only place a dignified sovereign might eat –– right on the dining table. Chrom scoots Ada up onto the table's edge with his hands under her thighs, that housecoat fanning out under her. Ada leans back on one hand and puts the other on his shoulder. She guides him down, bold as she pleases, and Chrom goes to his knees with a ready smile.

"There we are."

Chrom spreads her legs with both hands, and with his palms on the soft skin of her inner thighs, he just _looks_ at her. It's dim in the room, but with the fire crackling in the hearth and the candle on the table still stubbornly clinging to life, there's enough to _see_ –– Ada thinks there's always something odd about watching a man stare down her most intimate parts, and yet there's an odd power in it, seeing him relish that view. She moves a hand to his scalp and she tousles his bangs back, smoothing his cowlick only to watch it spring right back in place.

"I've been thinking about this all day," she murmurs, and he looks up at her as he presses a kiss to her thigh.

"Like what?" he asks.

She wraps that leg around his shoulder. He smirks against her skin and then works his way in –– kiss, kiss, nip. She feels a quickening in her pulse, a warmth pooling in her nether regions, waiting for him to touch. 

"What do you mean, like what?"

He grins, and she gives him a shrewd look that has him immediately kissing her inner thigh again, closer to the juncture. She feels herself getting wet already, a little flex that has her wanting him to get on with it, but he lingers still, sitting on his heels.

"Tell me what you were thinking."

Gods, does he ever take his sweet time, and not even just for her sake –– 

"Well, you going down on me, for one," she says. She gestures. _This._

He chuckles and kisses her outer lips, much too sweetly for how much she wants him. 

"We'll get there," he says. "What else?"

"After we were interrupted this morning, I couldn't stop thinking about it," she says. 

"Did you…?" 

His cheeks get pink and his voice dips a little bashful, like he's saying something he isn't supposed to.

She smiles down at him, a little wry. He's good at challenging her, and his bossiness on the battlefield segues quite nicely into the bedroom when he's talking with his body, but when he starts asking questions like those, well… 

"Touch myself? No."

"Why not?"

He inhales deeply then, as if he could breathe her in, and he wets a finger between his lips to trace the outline of her slit. She feels that tingle go right up her spine, feels his fingertip tease around the rim to her entrance but no closer. He glances up at her. 

"I didn't want to get interrupted again," she says. "So I had to think about it all day. But really––" she brushes his hair back again, tempted to just pull his face in by the scalp, but she settles for nudging him with a heel. _Stop teasing._ "I didn't want to leave you out."

"That's my favourite thing to hear," he says, and then he does put his mouth to her, warm and wet. His tongue runs along the length of her pussy, broad and flat, and she exhales comfortably. The day drifts away, just like that, the silliness with the girls, the tension of dinner, all gone. His lips drag against her lips briefly before returning to licking again.

Time itself slips away, too, and Ada slouches on that table, her lover paying rapt attention to her clit, her knees drawing higher and her thighs working their way in his shoulders. Her breath hitches hard when he gently sucks on her a moment, and then he dips down for a moment, then back down, and then up again –– teasing, building.

When he comes up to her clit again, she digs her heel into his back and he gets it. He's here to stay, now, and that's when the grip of his lips catches onto her a bit firmer, a bit stronger, and then––

"Chro–– _ooh."_

The table rattles hard when her weight slips off her hand and she ends up on her elbow –– the candle quivers, a fork hits the ground. Ada feels the tension rip down her legs, hooked on a place low in her belly, and Chrom gives a muffled groan as a reflexive little spasm has her boxing his ears with her thighs. Her breath comes harder, especially as Chrom doubles down –– he gets a firmer grip on her, pinning her hips against the table, and gods, his tongue does not stop, not for an instant. The pressure builds and he keeps laying it down, broad wet strokes that feel like they envelope all of her at once. _Everything_ is wet.

She's panting his name before long, her grip with her thighs locked in, her heels digging into his back. Her toes curl, her fingers curl, all of her curls –– Chrom gets both hands on her hips to keep her from bucking right into her jaw, clamping down as hard as he continues to lick her.

And then, like a little fire in her gut, she comes on his face. Chrom doesn't even startle, face still buried in her crotch, his eyes flicking up to meet her gaze. It's a short, delicious little orgasm, one she milks to the last second, using her thighs to keep him pinioned to her, and she only lets him go when he gives her a little squeeze.

He takes a deep, satisfied breath.

"Gods," he says, and she unhooks her legs from his shoulders and bends forward to kiss the crown of his head. He chuckles and catches her in a proper kiss right after. "I needed that."

She straightens up and ruffles his hair. He rises up on his knees, just enough to drape himself in her lap, and he lets out a long, satisfied noise.

"You want to take this to bed?" she asks.

"Mmm," he hums. He shakes his head. "I'll fall asleep after and I want to spend more time with you first. Unless you…"

"Let's go stargazing," she says.

He shifts off her and she slides off the table.Her thighs slip against the wood, and she glances back to see they've left the tiniest little puddle of wetness. Chrom follows her gaze to it, smiles, and grabs one of the fine linen dinner napkins to wipe it off. He wipes off his chin too and then leaves the napkin where it falls afterward, and she idly wonders just who is going to clean that up later. 

"Are we going to grab the duvet off our bed?" he asks.

"Sure," she says.

Chrom glances at the balcony doors. The snow is deep enough now that it peeks through the glass, taller than the wood paneling at the bottom. He pulls away from her to open the door, and the snow holds up in a firm wall, wet as it is. Chrom toes at it with a stockinged foot and shivers at the cold.

"Well, let's throw a few blankets down first, huh?"

"Why don't we drag a couch out and put blankets on that?" Ada suggests.

Chrom grins. He gestures at her with a finger –– _good idea_ –– and then goes for the nearest chaise longue. It's a fair bit bigger than he is, and possibly heavier with all that ornate wood, but he lifts it up by the backed end and drags it across the floor with one hand. She holds the door open for him, holding her housecoat closed against the cold, and he pushes it right out to the center of the balcony, in the middle of the snow.

The both of them fetch a few extra blankets from the chest at the foot of their bed, thick wool quilts they spread out on the couch, one of which Chrom tosses down as a pathway through the snow from the door. The duvet is next, big and heavy enough with goosedown that both of them carry it together, Ada largely wrapped in it to shield from the cold. Chrom grabs a few candles, too, nestling the candlesticks in the snow.

Once they're nice and set up, all that's left is to crawl into their cozy nest. Chrom goes in first, and holding open the blankets for her, he pats his lap. _Come here._

It is cold, and Ada is sorely tempted to just throw herself into the warmth that her housecoat is in so short supply of, but she lingers. He watches her, giving her a curious little smile, and in those seconds before she joins him, she strips off her housecoat entirely in the cold winter air, goosebumps alight on her skin and her nipples pebbling. 

"Are you crazy?" he asks, though he himself isn't in any more than a shirt, trousers and stockings.

Chrom watches her with a bit of a flush to his face –– they _are_ on a balcony high above the city, a place that would be plainly visible in daylight –– and he welcomes her into his arms and the blankets immediately, rubbing her to warm her back up again.

"You're crazy," he says.

"Take off your shirt," she replies.

Chrom laughs and lets go of her to do just that, fumbling to do it quickly. He tosses his shirt aside with her housecoat, somewhere on the blanket below them. He wraps them up tightly, and under the blanket he grabs her under the knees to scoot her right back into his lap.

"We'll actually be warmer this way," she says, nestling cozily down in his arms. "It's warmer skin to skin."

"I can't say I've cuddled in the snow with someone enough to tell the difference," Chrom says, pulling the blankets tighter around them. "Or ever, actually. I've never done this."

Ada smiles. She turns her eyes up to the sky; it is endless inky-blue above, and the dull orange glow of the city below. The skies are mostly cloudless, the only disruption to the star fields like mere smoke, mottled white and black and blue. The stars themselves, a smattering of luminous salt, near-random.

"Me either," she says. To her knowledge, anyway. There's no nostalgia, no déjà-vu. There's something nice about having these firsts. She wonders if this moment will be as clear to him in ten years as is will be for her, something they've done _together_ first.

It'll be like that again soon, she thinks, when they move into the Exalt's chambers together. That's another first, something they can embark on together. 

She leans up to kiss his jaw, swift and sweet. He glances at her, a little _what was that for?_ , but he knows. She's certain of it. She twists his ring on her finger with her other hand, fingertips ghosting over the grooves in it, and he presses his lips to her forehead.

Both of them look up at the stars. They're so bright and numerous. The world seems so big below them.

His hands find hers instead of gripping her body, and he runs a finger over the ring, too.

"Is there a story behind this ring?" Ada asks. "Frederick said it's a Gimmal ring."

"It is."

"Dare I ask if you have the other pieces?"

Chrom laughs, sheepishly.

"I guess you can," he says. "I figured you'd ask eventually. I hate to disappoint but I don't. I never did, to be honest."

He pauses and worries his lips, as if he'd almost let something unsavory pass between them. Ada watches him seem to fumble, so she hesitates to reply, or even ask. Chrom being Chrom, however, she knows it'll burst from him any—

"Frederick said they were interred with my mother."

Ada pauses. She's quite certain that Frederick had expressed some sort of ignorance to their location earlier, but she's not sure if she's caught him being dishonest or if she's looking for something to be cross with him about. Even so, she has to brush it off. It isn't worth spoiling the moment.

"It's okay, love," Ada says. "I didn't realize I was opening that kind of box."

"Technically that ring is my piece," he carries on anyway. "The piece you have was my father's part, the piece I should wear while we're engaged, but it's the only piece I had, and there weren't any other heirloom rings I felt right about. It's not too bad to break with tradition and all, I guess."

Ada feels her way around the ring. She tries to imagine it on Chrom's father, a man whom she knows little about; mentions of tyranny and coldness aside, she can't imagine he ever wore it, or it fitting Chrom. It's much too slim for his knuckles, made to end up on the woman's finger. 

"I don't know anything about tradition. We'll make new meaning for it. For us."

He nods.

"I'm glad," he says. He pauses. "I have a question for you, too, then."

"Hmm?"

He thumbs at her chin. 

"Does it bother you that all we've done the past few weeks is talk a bit and have sex?"

Ada looks to him with surprise.

"No," she says. "You told me you had work to do, work I couldn't help with –– heal the scars of war, and all. I agreed to that."

"I know, but I feel terrible that I even asked that of you."

She sits up in his arms, barely putting space between them but turning to face him. She searches his face, stroking his cheek with her thumb. 

"Why, love?"

"Because you seem so bored," he says. "Even unhappy! And I want to make this place a home for you, a place you'll love to be. I thought I'd have time to show you to the ruins I played in as a child, or take you hunting, or… something."

"Well, I don't care about the castle," she says. His concerned expression flinches, and she carries on: "I'd love a home –– my _first_ home –– but what really matters is being with _you_ , and I have that already."

Chrom hums under his breath, something she feels through him, skin-to-skin. He spans a hand up her back, resting it at the back of her neck, right at the seal of the blanket. His eyes search hers for _something_.

"But what if it takes me months? Years?" he asks. He purses his lips for a second. Trepidation lingers on his face. "Ada, what if you don't want to wait around for me?"

She shakes her head firmly.

"Your title is always going to demand a lot from you," she says. "If it comes to the point where I can't 'wait around', I'll just _join_ you. Forget what anyone thinks, forget tradition –– Frederick, the council, ambassadors. I'll be at your side the moment you ask it of me."

Chrom breathes out sweet, heavy relief. He grips her a little tighter, and Ada exhales slowly and cozies in again, letting go of his face in favour of putting both arms around him. She nestles herself in as if they share one skin, the whole of her pressed up against the whole of him, 

"Gods, what would I do without you?" he asks.

"You wouldn't have gotten dinner," Ada replies.

Chrom bursts out laughing.

"You're as bold as brass!" he says. He bumps the tip of his nose against hers, and a cheeky smile alights on his mouth. "And without me, you'd always be bored."

Ada smiles, and she bumps her nose back against his in turn.

"Without you, I'd have _nothing_ ," she says. She smiles. "Speaking of always having sex, though… it's very cold out, and I didn't get my own dessert."

Chrom laughs, a little pinker in the cheeks than the cold could plausibly be the culprit of.

"It's _far_ too damned cold out here," he says, and then he picks her right up off the couch with him.

 

 

—⚜—

 

When Ada wakes the next morning, it's early, much earlier than she would normally wake, and once more she's cold. Their duvet, on top of being somewhat damp in places from being outdoors, is peeled back once more, this time because Chrom is already awake, sitting upright in their great bed and staring into the aether. She has half a mind to drag him back to rest and cozy in once more, but whatever he's thinking about, he seems to have gone away in it. 

She watches a big sigh escape his lungs.

The previous night feels a thousand miles away, and there she is caught between how the morning light halos him, and how bitter it is to watch someone she loves ensnared by a sadness she had some hand in causing.

Now there's a grey thought for the morning.

"Hey," she murmurs. When she nudges him in the thigh with her knee, he glances down at her and smiles.

"Hey," he says.

Chrom reaches over to slide a hand down her thigh under the covers. He gives her a firm, possessive squeeze, and though he smiles as he does it, he seems barely pulled from his thoughts.

"You okay?" she asks.

He nods.

"After everything we talked about last night, I was thinking… I'm going to take the day for myself," he says. His voice loosens up a bit, and she watches his old courage lay itself out before her eyes –– the kind she could see bubble up when he gets his hand around Falchion, when he plucks himself up for a fight. "Court is out anyway, and I'm sure the dignitaries are fine with our magisters today. Maribelle can see them, maybe. She'd like that."

Ada props her head up on a hand. She thinks of Frederick's tone with her, his warning about distracting Chrom from his work, and then she pushes it aside. This is _his_ choice, and she can live with taking the blame for it.

"Well, you're welcome to lounge with me," Ada says, trailing a knuckle down his side. "Gods know I have nothing to do. Might as well do you."

Chrom smiles brighter, the shells of his ears going pink. Something occurs to her.

"Actually, on that note," she says. "What you said last night about the old ruins nearby… I heard about them, and the cave-ins that happened a few years ago. I even looked up some old maps. I think if anyone could find a passage inside, it'd be us."

She trails her fingers along his bare upper thigh, onto his hip, across his abdomen. He watches her fingers go and then looks at her.

"Do you want to go?" he says. He sounds like he dare not hope, and Ada smiles.

"If you're up to it."

"Of course," he says. "We'll have to throw Frederick, though. He'll keep his distance if I ask, but he won't just agree to me running off entirely."

"When haven't we thrown him?"

"Never," he says. He looks down at her with such fondness, challenge slipping into his voice: "What's our plan, tactician?"

Ada smirks.

"I've missed hearing that," she says. "Listen carefully…"

 

 

 


	4. Outgrown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chrom and Ada slip out of the city to explore an abandoned manor from Chrom's youth.

. 

 

 

"Where do we find this door, again?" Chrom asks, again. 

Two hours and change ride from Ylisse, the snow is deeper, unfettered by the city's warmth and bustle. In fact, there's so much snowfall that it's almost impossible to tell what shape the ruins underneath are in, or whether this little adventure will be fruitful at all. Even with her shrewd eyes, Ada can't figure out where the door should be post-collapse, and the few keystones she thought might have pointed towards a door just belong to walled-up windows. She sighs, mittened fingers fumbling with the map she'd carefully copied from the archives.

"The back entrance is _supposed_ to be around here," she says. "That's what the documents say. I couldn't find any of its record of it being impassable, so I'm sure there must be _some_ way in…"

"We've tried three entrances in an hour and my toes are going numb."

Ada turns to look at him. 

"Are you doubting me?" she asks.

"Huh? No!" he insists. His shakes his head so quickly that the white fur trim of his hood wobbles around his face. Cute. "I just thought it'd be easier to find… I didn't think we'd be tromping around this much..."

Ada laughs and turns her back on him. She picks up the hem of her cloak to keep high-stepping through the snow, following the perimeter of the old structure and periodically reaching here or there to wipe snow from bulges of stone. 

"What's so funny?" he calls.

She just laughs on, until he dashes at her through the snow and grabs her in a great bear hug, lifting her right off her feet. She lets out a higher squeal of laughter in surprise, clutching his arms.

"I think you're laughing at me," he says, slyly, right in her ear. She lets her weight go dead in his arms, hanging in his grip. When he chuckles, a great fog of his breath appears on the air.

"I can't believe you want to give up this soon!" she says. "You're the one who wanted to show me this place."

"These are my _good_ boots and I'm still losing my toes," he insists.

"Well, it'll be warmer inside."

"If we ever find an entrance!"

Ada pushes herself from his grip and seizes his hand to march him through the snow with her. 

"Gods, every inch of me is frozen," Chrom complains, following her into deeper snow.

"Well, then at least keep your tongue warm. What started you and your friends coming here?" Ada asks.

"You mean _our_ friends?"

"They were _your_ friends at the time," Ada says.

"I can't help that it feels like you've always been with us," Chrom says. Her heart swells just a little, not just for what he's said but his easy sentimentality, his assuredness. He just smiles.

"Okay, sap," she teases. "The _manor._ "

He ponders it a moment, and she can practically see the memories rolling around in his head, churning up nostalgia and good times. She's excited for it. It's fantastic to hear people talk about their memories. He says: "Well, this was the house of one of my father's advisors. When the war ended, he was no longer untouchable. He had been hoarding wealth for years, and so he was dragged into the streets by a mob and people looted his house."

"Wow," Ada says. "The power of the people."

"No kidding," Chrom replies. "But the manor being where it is, far out in the countryside, it meant a bunch of us spoiled noble kids and our friends, we could take a day to ride out and explore… sometimes supervised, sometimes not. Frederick didn't mind sometimes, because there was only so much trouble we could get into in an empty house. It was a shame to lose those days when we got older and were burdened with more responsibilities."

Ada glances back at him. There's a fondness in his voice as he talks, a wistful look in his eyes. Does he wish he could go back entirely, she wonders? 

And then she spies it; a great outcropping of rock that has provided shelter from some snowfall, and right in its shade is a collapsed doorway. Ada beelines for it, skipping through the snow, Chrom following suit.

"You spoke too soon about not getting in," she tells him.

"Do you think this one is passable?"

"Let's find out."

Up close, she can tell that this door, like the others, was walled off at one point. However, when the structure collapsed, much of that old mortar and stone had been dislodged, leaving a slim but promising gap in the stone. Ada appraises it up close for a moment, and she gives some of the surrounding stones a shove. A few come loose, widening the gap.

"There we are," Ada says, smiling.

Chrom smiles, too, like she's insane for suggesting this, but he's the one who wanted to revisit these ruins. It's been a handful of years since the collapse, and a handful more since he had visited them as a teenager with his friends, but it's his nostalgia. Moreover, it's his part to share with her. Ada has no particular love for spelunking, but for him, she'll wind herself into any dark cavern. 

She opens her hands, murmurs under her breath, and breathes life into her hands –– a little orb of fire alights in the crux of her palm, and she holds it to the doorway.

"We doing this?" she asks, already slipping halfway through the crevasse. 

Chrom nods.

The hallway opens up almost immediately, so Ada moves fully inside and steps aside to make space. Chrom squeezes in after her; his broader shoulders and chest make it a touch more difficult even before his voluminous furs, and he needs to tip Falchion straight up to pass through without unsheathing it, but he manages with a sharp breath in.

"Let's hope we don't have to escape with a hurry," he says.

Ada nods, but she's already started down the hall. Inside it is cool but dry, warmer only for the lack of exposure to the elements. She looks all around her as she walks, holding the fire higher, and Chrom follows her in the entranceway with a little wonder on his face. It's been a while.

"Do you recognize this part of the manor?"

She moves in a little deeper. When she raises the light, she catches sight of an old oven, a three foot tall half-circle set into the stone wall. The broad platform in front of it is littered with crumbled stone.

"This is the bakehouse," Chrom says. He smiles. "Vaike used to say it's haunted."

"Haunted by what?" she says.

"The baker," he says, as if this were obvious. "He upset the lord of the house by sleeping with his wife, so the lord had him thrown in the oven. When we were here as kids, we would hear his moans, like he was still slowly burning to death."

"You sure that wasn't just the wind or something?" she asks.

Ada looks up the stone vent above it. The top is blocked off by something, too far off for her fire light to reach. Perhaps it was open earlier, or there's a gap in the stone somewhere that could make the wind groan while passing through. Or perhaps, she thinks, the're a loose hinge on a door that echoes when it creaks.

"It was definitely human," he says. He smiles to himself. "Most of us wouldn't go near this part of the house, so he enlisted Miriel's help to try and determine a natural cause. I bet he'd give up without an answer but he refused. The two of them spent the better part of a summer trying to figure it out, but nothing ever came of it, so we all steered clear."

Ada raises an eyebrow.

"Just the two of them, huh?" Ada asks.

"Yes," Chrom says, and then he frowns. "Why?"

Ada raises an eyebrow at him.

Chrom just watches her a moment, and then he gives her a pondering look. She doesn't elaborate any further, preferring instead to watch the cogs turning in his head, and then he raises his eyebrows, too.

"No," he says.

"Probably," she says.

"Oh gods," Chrom says. "I can't believe it. _All_ summer!"

His laughter bounces off the old walls, echoing down into the dark.  

 

—⚜—

 

Despite the collapses, it seems much of the manor is passable inside, at least on the ground floor. The upper floors' collapse has created a shell over the ground floor, a protective cocoon that has kept out much of the chill. Much of the furniture and goods inside must have been taken in the ransacking, well before the castle's collapse, and little else remains but wood paneling dampened with rot, cracked marble tiles and a few oddities that perhaps no one had wanted to bother hauling away. There's a stone mantlepiece that likely would have been broken out of the wall and carried off had it not been cracked down the middle, and some bannister decorations that may have been too much hassle for firewood and too ugly to want to keep. Chrom also points out the copious amounts of coloured glass that had once been pretty windows set with beads; these had been the first to go in the lootings and now they just crunch merrily under Ada's boots.

She wonders what it must have been like to be here during the collapse, but she has no idea what it might have been like. The current collapse feels wholly different, beyond being a basis for comparison.

The best preserved room is what used to be a ballroom, the two-story ceiling largely preserved where the rest of the rooms feel cluttered. The tile floors are a little slippery from snowmelt and littered with stone debris and more broken glass. Ada circles the room lighting the few torches that have still survived, murmuring fire spells under her breath. There: finally, she has both hands free again to navigate the wreckage.

"Frederick told us he attended a ball here once," Chrom says. "I always wondered what it must have looked like before it was ransacked."

"With how many times you and your friends visited, I imagine that was a lot of wondering," Ada says.

Chrom nods.

"It was," he says. "Probably not the best use of my time."

"What else were you supposed to do with your time?" Ada asks.

She knows almostly instantly what the answer is, largely because she sees it on his face –– a little dash of hurt, at least partially self-inflicted. They both have the same answer prepared, as it has fluttered at the backs of their respective minds for weeks.

"Be prepared for the worst, I suppose." Chrom shakes his head. "I spent a lot of time ungrateful for the life I had –– even bemoaning it, complaining about the limitations it put on me, the things I couldn't do, the places I couldn't go, always having a shadow, always having protocol…"

"So you're prepared," she says. Anything to slide the conversation away from grief, to keep him esconsed in this little day trip where they can be lighthearted and not worry about the rest of the Ylisse, or managing its grief, or stacking Chrom up against those who came before him. "At the end of the day, even if you don't feel ready, you're more prepared than anyone else."

But Chrom isn't looking at her. His attention is fixed on the ballroom, as if its tarnished interior could provide him some distraction, some opportunity to change the subject. There's nothing, however, but the mild reverberation of their voices off the high ceiling, the drip of water leaking somewhere.

"That may be true," he says finally, "And I do have the support of… well, everyone left from Emmeryn's court, Frederick, my friends. Everyone _wants_ me to succeed. But is it odd to say I would have been happy leading a militia for the rest of my life? I don't even want to remake the royal army in the image of the Shepherds."

"Why is that?" Ada asks.

He looks at her then, suddenly confused.

"Why?" he repeats. Then he laughs, the sound echoing. "Ada. I miss having you at my side. You have a way of making everything so easy."

"On a battlefield, maybe," Ada says. "I don't know that I can offer you anything but moral support at court, and even then, I can only do it from a distance."

"I don't _want_ distance."

"But other people do."

"Who?"

Ada frowns. Who? She has no idea, truthfully.

"Frederick has been filling my days up with reasons to not be at your side at court. Even just the other night, I got the impression that Frederick arranged for Cordelia and Gregor to visit in order to _distract_ me while the rest of you socialized and danced."

"Really?" Chrom gets a little look about him, puzzled. "But Frederick told me that I shouldn't push you to stick by me because you weren't comfortable with court yet, so I thought you'd be happier with them."

Ada feel a fleeting stab of anger, like a pinprick to the finger. Chrom sees it on her, too, but he doesn't seem to know what to do with it, his tongue trapped between his teeth. She thinks of Lissa again ––  _He should be sticking up for you._ For what, though? For Frederick using her discomfort to drive a rift between them? _Is_ it even a rift? There would be far easier ways to do that than subterfuge, and Frederick has seldom kept his opinions to himself.

Subterfuge seems more like her own thing, a cloak she didn't ask for placed on her shoulders. Much as she's always denied engaging in it, being accused of it from her very first memory has made it hers, in a way. 

Frederick _abhors_ subterfuge, of that she feels certain. 

"Did you want to dance?" Chrom asks, finally.

"Yes, but I don't care about that," Ada says. "I care that I don't know where I stand here, so I can't help you."

"You do help me," Chrom says. "Maybe not in the ways you want, but you are."

There are a thousand things she could argue, but she tells herself right then and there that her frustration is not with Chrom. It's with Frederick.

She will not be pitted against her fiancé.

"Alright," he says. "This is too heavy for our escape day. Here's an idea. You've taught me a hell of a lot on the battlefield over the entire time we've known each other. The least I can do is teach you a thing or two about living at court… and next time you'll join me."

He stretches a hand towards her.

"Really?" she asks.

"Really," he says.

"I don't know how to dance," she says.

"I _know_ that," he grins.

A laugh bubbles out of her. She adopts an expression of mock offense –– they've danced together _once_ and he's going to rib her for it, is he? 

"Wow," she says. "I guess it's on you to teach me, then."

"I better, unless I want to lose my toes," he says. He wiggles the fingers of his outstretched hand, beckoning her. Anything she could have left to say fizzles. She wants his hand more than she wants to spoil their day with an argument.

"Shut up," she says, placing her hand in his.

He grins, pulling her in towards him. Her boots squeak on the tile. Chrom fits her other hand to his upper arm and then slips his hand to her back, snaking under both her arm and the bulk of her cloak. 

"Straight back," he says, and he lifts his chin a little higher, so she does the same. "You have to look like someone's rammed a lance up your back end."

Ada snorts, head bowing so low she nearly clocks him in the jaw with her forehead, but she lifts her chin proudly again as soon as she regains her composure. 

"Follow me," he says.

So she does, looking up at him as he starts them off across the floor. He hums some tune under his breath, something completely unfamiliar to her and yet pleasing nonetheless, and they're close enough that she can almost feel the vibration on his breath. He looks down at her, dark lashes low on his eyes. When she looks back at him, his cheeks go a little pink.

She feels her footwork is off, unable to look down, but every time she tries to overextend, Chrom firmly keeps her at his pace. She feels it in the tension of his wrist, the hand on her back. He winces a little when she catches his toe and almost trips both of them up, but he keeps going. They cross the ballroom once more, Chrom waltzing them around the larger hunks of fallen stone.

"You keep trying to lead," he chides. "That's my job."

"Okay," she says.

"Unusual, right?" Chrom says. He twirls her, then; it surprises Ada how easily he pushes her into a spin and pulls her right back, and how her feet don't get tangled up in the process.

But as they move back into the steps, Ada slows down when she hears the leather soles of her boots slap water. Chrom reluctantly slows to match when he realizes she isn't going to keep moving as fast as he is, and they both look down.

"What is it?"

"How is it warm enough in here for snowmelt?" she asks.

"Oh," he says. He drags up some old recollection and smiles. "The enchantment on this castle's water supply was still around when our friends and I were children –– you could still get hot water out of the taps. It must still be lingering."

"Must have been some powerful magic."

"The owner could afford powerful mages," Chrom says. He smiles wryly, his grip on her already loosening. "Did you want to go check it out?"

"Absolutely," she says.

Chrom just laughs.

 

—⚜—

 

Getting downstairs is much easier than getting inside the manor, given the old stone steps in the servants' quarters have survived largely intact. In fact, there's little sign of rampage down there, and Ada supposes most of it had been taken by the servants themselves, unhindered by the rage of the mob. There are few marks of destructions at all, no shattered wood or broken glass. If it weren't the basement of a crumbling manor, perhaps it could have merely been empty, the people moved on naturally without any violence at all.

Chrom moves about this area with more trepidation. He'd never been down here, he explains. This time not because of potential hauntings or couples hooking up on the hearth, but because it had felt inappropriate to step foot in the servants' quarters. 

"That's ridiculous," Ada says.

"It's true."

And yet it's still ridiculous. Somehow, tresspassing and adventuring in an abandoned manor is reasonable for a young prince and his friends, but not stepping foot in abandoned servants' quarters. 

They find their way downstairs eventually, avoiding puddles and a little badger family that had taken up residence in a side room. Everything feels damp down here, and when they finally find the room with the hot water reservoir, they know it first because the closed door hiding it is steamed right through, and when Chrom gives it a push, half the door crumbles entirely.

Inside, it really is just a room with a large tiled basin set into the ground. It is perhaps twelve feet across with a large obelisk-shaped stone in the center. That obelisk radiates heat; even if it didn't, Ada would imagine that as the heat source. Pipes run from the far side, stretching up into the ceiling and through to the upper floors.

"Does your–– our castle have one of these?" Ada asks. 

 _Nice catch,_ his eyes say, but he remarks: "We do, but it doesn't work as well. More people rely on it, enough that any household mage would struggle to keep up with. I've also heard some people fill their baths twice."

Ada grins, stepping away from him to place their light in the torches on the wall.

"I like what I like," she says, stripping off her gloves and pocketing them. She rolls up her sleeve and stoops down at the water's side to dip her hand in. It's tolerably hot, the kind of bathing water she craves but is never quite that hot by time it gets from the fire to the tub. Someone, she decides, needs to find these powerful mages and address the water situation in the capital's castle. 

"It looks so nice," Chrom remarks.

It does look nice –– nice enough to come up with a number of naughty ideas. Ada glances at Chrom, who raises his eyebrows at her.

"Want to?" Ada asks. She's sweltering in the muggy cavern now, and undoes the cloak clasp at her throat and shrugs just one shoulder out. The whole cloak falls on momentum alone, collapsing around her feet.

"Want to what?" Chrom says, blithely.

She tugs the lace loose from the eyelets of her tunic, and the fabric eases away to reveal her cleavage. Chrom's eyes drift down, and then back up. 

"It's a reservoir, not a tub," he says. "I don't think you're supposed to…"

"We're at least an hour away from the nearest living soul, in a near-inaccessible collapsed manor," she says, popping the lace out entirely to let her tunic hang open, and she unbuttons the fitted bodice underneath while he watches. Her breasts bulge free from their trappings. "Are we really going to pass up the opportunity?"

Chrom smirks. 

"I never get tired of your opportunities," he says.

Chrom disrobes with surprising speed, his baldric and tunic dropping right after his cloak and his boots and trousers following suit soon after. Ada is still unlacing her boots by time he's finished, and he laughs at her as he wades in.

"You know," he says, "if you just wore skirts, you'd be naked by now."

"If I wore skirts I wouldn't be able to keep your hands out from under them," Ada retorts.

"Is that _so_ bad?" he grins.

"I guess we're both modest people, Prince Wears-His-Underwear-Swimming."

She gives him a wry look and finishes shucking off the rest of her clothes, leaving her completely nude. She takes a moment to stand at the edge and pull her hair up into a ponytail, and when she's done, Chrom offers her a hand to help her in. After a whole morning in the cold, it's nice to feel the heat rush right up her as she sinks down.

"And by the way, you're going to regret that when you ride back with wet underwear," Ada says.

His white braies have turned transparent in the water, leaving very little to the imagination; Ada can see the clear shape of his cock at half mast, and the thin fabric sticks to his toned upper thighs like a second skin. 

"Damn! You're right," he says. He laughs, almost in disbelief. "That's going to be a lousy ride..."

"I guess you'll have to go without," Ada says, and she reaches for his drawstring. Chrom watches her hand drift around his crotch, caught between embarrassment and anticipation, and she just tugs it loose. The waistband opens, floating away from his hips, and Ada has a little delight in following the fine hairs down his lower abdomen to the wet curl of his pubic hair. She pushes his braies down and Chrom reaches in to fondle himself, pumping once, twice. Watching his hand move, cock thick against the crux of his thumb, god, if she doesn't want to just lick and suck on every inch of him...

She sinks lower in the water, finding purchase on the stone floor with her knees. He leans back on the stone edge and she takes him in one hand. Chrom exhales deeply and she feels that breath through the rise of his chest, the subtle way he pushes his hips forward.

"Come here," he says, beckoning her back towards the edge. She follows. He hops up and wraps his legs around her waist and pulls her in tight, and she grins when he traps her up against his cock.

"You want me to blow you?" she asks. She knows but she asks –– it's so worth the little fluster to his smile, the way his knees tighten even more before letting her go, knowing she'll stay. 

He grins down at her, and she back up at him. She finds his hand and guides it to the back of her head.

"Hold on, then," she murmurs.

His fist closes around her ponytail.

 

—⚜—

 

When they're mostly dried off and redressed, their innermost layers sticking to their damp skin and their woollen socks refit awkwardly into their tight boots, it's late afternoon, and the right time to hit the road again. It'll take a few hours to get back, and both of them feel it's appropriate to get back home before it gets dark, and ideally leave time for Chrom to get some "work" done socializing downstairs.

It takes some time to work their way back to the road, but there the trees open up a bit more and they can ride side by side instead of single file. Ada likes riding side by side, like they're back on the war trail. In the lifespan of Ada's memory, at least half have spent on the war trail, and so being on the road with him feels as normal as waking up in the morning, as natural as their chemistry. If she reached out her arm at this moment, and he did the same, they could brush fingertips across the void. That kind of closeness.

She hopes they can have this again, even without going back to war.

"So," Chrom says, after some comfortable silence. "Update me on our friends' lives."

"What?" Ada laughs.

"Our friends!" Chrom laughs, too. "Tell me what's going on with them. I feel like I haven't seen anyone in weeks. It's like I'm in social exile."

"It's not like I've seen them any more," Ada replies. "I've been on lockdown, aside from getting to see Cordelia that once!"

"Ah, but you see Maribelle," Chrom says. "That makes all the difference. Maribelle is the key to the outside world."

"A fair point," Ada smiles. "Well, fine then. Miriel and Vaike are planning a trip to the shore in the spring for a honeymoon. Maribelle says they were going to try to go before the war.”

"I think they've been trying to arrange that forever," Chrom says. "Did you know they got married when we were teenagers? Or at least when Vaike was. She's a little bit older."

"I didn't know she was older," Ada says, surprised. "I knew they were married young."

"By a few years," Chrom replies. "They've been together for as long as I remember." Ada snorts. Chrom laughs: "Don't start that again."

And then his laughter fades out as he looks forward. Ada watches concern bloom on his face; Chrom gestures ahead. There's a young man walking on the side of the road, leaving a long trail of lonely footprints in the snow behind him. The man spies them and starts waving and hollering.

"Help!" he cries.

"Shall we?"

"Let's go see what we can do," Chrom says, and he nudges his horse into a pluckier pace. Ada follows, fingers winding a little tighter around the reins and leaning up in the saddle.

When they get close, Ada is surprised to see the young man is actually a boy no older than thirteen or fourteen, shivering in the cold in a too-short coat. His boots have certainly seen better days, as well. His ears and cheeks are bright red with cold.

"What's the matter, boy?" Chrom asks.

Chrom's not particularly stern or demanding about it, but the boy stops in his tracks regardless. His eyes rove between them, undoubtedly noting their furs and leathers, as well as the fine saddlery on their horses. Falchion's hilt is obvious, too, even with just the gold pommel and the red leather wrappings poking out from the lapel of Chrom's cloak.

"Are you the Exalt?" the boy asks.

Chrom frowns, but he nods.

"I am, and this is Ada," he says. "Why are you all the way out here, alone?"

The boy seems to pull himself together at that, reminded of his task.

"My family's carthorse and wagon went off the side of the road," he says, suddenly concerned again. "We can't get it back up, what with the snow being so deep…"

"Here," Chrom says, nudging his horse forward a few steps before offering a hand. The boy doesn't move. "We'll take you back and do whatever we can to help. What's your name?"

"Fergus," the boy says.

"Well, Fergus, give me your hand."

"Really?" Fergus asks.

"Really," Chrom replies.

Fergus looks between them, and as reserved as he might be in the presence of royalty, he seems relatively sure of himself when he says: "Maybe it'd be better if I rode with the lady. Seems like there's a bit more room up there, an' all."

Ada snorts. Chrom lets out an incredulous laugh.

"I guess you can walk, then!" Chrom says, but he offers that hand once more.

"Was worth a shot," Fergus shrugs, and he takes Chrom's hand. Chrom scoots back in the saddle and lifts the boy up; the boy gets a knee up on the saddle somewhere, and his free hand on the horn, but otherwise it's all on Chrom's swordarm. Good to see two weeks of sitting at court and rubbing elbows with officials hasn't dulled his strength any.

"How far down the road, Fergus?" Ada asks.

Once in the saddle, Fergus seems right at home, legs dangling in front of Chrom's, both hands clutching the horn for balance. The smile plastered on his face is as broad as Chrom's shoulders. Ada smiles seeing it, and Chrom's own smile, more modest yet no less pleased. It's nice to see him so satisfied, even if it's such a small thing.

Chrom glances at her when he catches her staring.

"What?" he says. (He always sounds so bossy when he says that, so petulant. _What?_ ) Fergus looks around too.

"Nothing," she says.

"I didn't know that the Exalt could just go out running around the countryside on his own," Fergus comments.

"They don't, usually," Ada replies. "But Chrom does things a little differently."

Or so it would seem. While she has no doubts for Emmeryn's deep wells of kindness, Ada's not sure anyone could imagine Emmeryn getting into this position in the first place.

 The wreck comes into view a couple miles down the road; not terribly far by horseback, but on foot, Ada images the boy must have been walking for close to an hour. As they approach, Ada watches the family turn and look to them and all freeze, too. It would be amusing if it didn't feel like they weren't appraised like interlopers from another world.

Chrom dismounts and reaches to help Fergus follow, but Fergus slides down on his own, snow crunching under the momentum of his boots hitting ground. Ada slips from her own horse and takes the reins of both, leading them off to the side of the road. She takes a moment to appraise the cart –– they've unhitched the horse, having tethered it to a nearby tree, and the cart sits at a sharp angle, so deep into a snowbank that the right-side wheels are nearly buried. Ada glances back at the long, snaking grooves carved into the road where they had slid; they're lucky that they must not have moving too fast, or else they might have been thrown.

"Hit a patch of ice?" Ada calls, if only to break the silence. 

"Yes," the woman says, stepping forward. 

The woman's gaze flits back to Chrom, and then to her husband; they aren't sure who they should be addressing, Ada realizes. She shoots Chrom a pointed look.

"Oh!"

Chrom steps forward.

"We met your son up the road –– I'm Chrom," he says, as if he really needs an introduction. He extends a hand to shake; the father extends his own hand in turn, but instead of shaking, he drops to a knee and kisses Chrom's gloved knuckles. The rest of the family just kneels in the snow, the mother looking a touch exasperated as she eases her pregnant self down. Chrom gently pulls his hand away. "Please, rise –– you don't need to kneel in the snow on my account…"

The lot of them rise slowly, almost unsure. Ada just watches, hands buried in her pockets; she's never bowed to Chrom in her life, and the one time she'd met Emmeryn, she'd not known what to do and had just stood there. (She had always been invited to stand afterwards, effectively missing what had turned out to be her one chance.) At this point, she's not sure she'd bow to _any_ royalty.

"Who are you?" Chrom asks.

"I'm Jamie, and this is my wife, Claire," says the man. "Our son Fergus, and daughter Brianna…"

Chrom nods at each in turn. Both children are quite small, and the girl couldn't be older than eight or so. Between them and their pregnant mother, Ada isn't surprised that wagon hasn't been budged from the snowbank.

"Pleased to meet you all," Chrom says. "Though I wish it were under better circumstances."

"We're very grateful that you would stop at all, Your Highness. I'm a trained cleric, but unfortunately that's of little use for snowmelt," Claire says, sighing. She pauses. "Are you travelling without a retinue?"

Chrom smiles.

"Between the two of us and our arms, we should be fine," he says. He palms Falchion's pommel, too, but Ada feels every eye swivel to her. Chrom moves to her immediately, a hand drifting to her lower back as he presents her to them. "This is Ada, the chief tactician of the Shepherds, and my fiancée."

Ada watches dull surprise drift over the family, a stark contrast to the pride in Chrom's voice.

"A fiancée?" Claire repeats. "Well… that sounds promising for Ylisse's future. Very diplomatic."

But there's something odd in that praise, if it's even praise at all. Chrom doesn't seem to know what to make of it, either, his smile frozen as if waiting for something more, a congratulations, delighted questions or gushing or _something._ Ada doesn't know what she's even looking for, but she knows something is missing. Something warmer than _diplomatic_.

"Yes…" Chrom says, finally. He drops his hand from her back. "Uh, shall we get your cart back on the road?"

"Aye, Your Grace, let's." Jamie pauses, concerned. "If you're certain, that is. Surely you have better things to do, being the Exalt, after all."

As if he needed reminding.

"Listen," Chrom says. "I appreciate your fealty, I truly do, but I already spent many of my years running this path. I hope to never outgrow that. My knight, my friends, my younger sister –– we have helped many people while traveling up and down this road, and never before has anyone declined my help because they thought…"

He trails, seeming a little lost, and then he braces himself with a smile.

"Nobody ever thought this was _beneath_ me," Chrom says.

"Oh," Claire says, alarmed. "Oh, Your Grace, we didn't mean to offend."

"You haven't offended me," he says. "Just… let me help you. It would be an honour to serve you and your family, whether it's from the palace or here in this ditch. And please! You may call me Chrom."

"Well, we would most sincerely appreciate the help," Claire says, a hand over her heart.

Ada doesn't imagine calling him  _Chrom_ is going to happen, but she adjusts her gloves and sets off from him towards the cart anyway. Might as well get down to business. 

The cart is buried at least a foot in deep snow, and with the family's provisions and supplies weighing it down, it isn't likely to move alone. Ada quickly assesses that it would be best to empty it, and she rallies the children and Clair in moving the smallest articles from the cart. Chrom and Jamie tackle the two large trunks and then set about jury-rigging Chrom and Ada's horses to the cart to help pull while the men and Ada push. Clair and and the children lead the horses on.

"Three, two, one… push!" Chrom bellows.

The three of them dig in with their heels and push. Ada feels the strain in her calves to both push forward and keep traction in the snow, but as all of them throw their weights forward, slowly but surely, the wagon begins to work its way up the hill. Ada digs in, and she catches a glimpse of Chrom's face, the squared jaw, the grit teeth. 

It's odd, but in that moment of concentration, she thinks he looks happy. 

 

—⚜—

 

Once back upright and reassembled, Chrom and Ada decide to just escort the family back to Ylisse. With one cart wheel shaky on a splintered axel and the carthorse walking off strain, they deem it better to arrive late but see their people back to the city safely than risk walking away and another accident occurring. Jamie takes Ada's horse and Ada rides with Clair at the reins of the cart, the children in the back. Though it means less time with Chrom, she doesn't terribly mind an opportunity to speak to people from beyond the castle, either. People more like her.

Claire makes good company, too; if Ada has read her comment about diplomacy right, she's whip-smart and perceptive, traits which Ada rather admires when they're not being dug under her own skin. And sure enough, after properly introducing themselves to each other –– where they were born, what they do, a few choice tales of war and warfare –– Claire moves to questions. The first of which, to some thrill, cuts right to the point:

"So what is it like, to be engaged to marry the Exalt?"

Ada laughs. She can't help it; it seems like such an unbelievable premise to her, even now. Just a month ago, when thoughts of marrying Chrom were strange, girlish fantasies, she'd still thought herself likely to be a duchess or something when Emmeryn eventually married and bore heirs, effectively bumping Chrom down the line of succession. Now: consort.

"Not that titles particularly matter to me," Ada muses, "but it's strange. Castle life has been…"

She shakes her head.

"Stifling?" Claire suggests. 

Her smile is knowing. Ada sizes her up. Her wild hair floats free at her shoulders, her face bare. "You've been to court?"

"Once," Claire replies. "My husband has some relatives in House Claive; a cousin, in particular. I don't think court suits me, personally, the rigidity, the protocol –– but I imagine if I had been there longer I might have found my place in it."

"I don't think I would have come here if it weren't for him," Ada says. "But with all the changes as of late, I'm hoping maybe it could be. I don't even know what his court will look like."

Claire's smile fades a little.

"Is he prepared for that? For court?"

Ada ponders a moment.

"I think so," Ada says. "But I think he'll find his way, no matter what happens. As I understand it, he has the greatest and the worst behind him. He knows exactly how far he can fall behind Emmeryn, but exactly how much greater he can be than their father…"

She trails, shaking her head. 

Claire nods and then glances back at her children, both of whom have dozed off, wrapped in blankets amongst the luggage.

"I want a good future for my children," she says. "I know that's nothing you can promise me, but… I hope you understand what is at stake for those of us who have so little say in the goings-on of the world."

Ada looks forward to Chrom, and she watches the easy way he smiles at something Jamie has said; he can make friends so effortlessly, no matter where he is, no matter who he is with. She remembers herself dizzy the first time he hauled her to her feet, the way he'd immediately ensconced her in a circle of friends, in a _purpose_. Back then the world had seemed so much easier, relations with Plegia just a series of old tensions far from boiling over. Even if she had no idea who she was, everything felt so much more _known_ then.

Now, she doesn't feel any closer to knowing, and she worries that perhaps they never will.

"I do," she says. "Because I feel it too."

 

—⚜—

 

Some hours later, they arrive back into the city of Ylisstol as the sun is setting and the orange lights of the city are coming up.

When departing the castle this morning, they'd exited through a kitchen door in the back of the palace. Now, however, routing back around to there would take so much more time in the cold, especially when they've already found themselves delayed, and so they decide to take the main street back towards the castle gates. _Someone will see who we are and let us in,_ Chrom jokes. 

So after having delivered the little family to their home and shared in generous goodbyes to their new friends, Chrom and Ada follow the lamplighters as they make their way down one of the city's arterial streets. The lights come up as they go, as if the sun were chasing their heels, and though it is all-too-apparent to Ada that their presence is obvious and very much known, the people leave them be, letting them pass unbothered. She's sure if they had gone in much lighter clothing, they might have passed entirely unnoticed.

The castle, having long loomed on their horizon, seems taller than ever when they approach the castle gates. Approach is indeed difficult, as well: the castle walls is surrounded by a sea of candles and dried flowers. If it were summer in Ylisse, it might be a sea of flowers, of colours, of riotous delight in the life she had lived and given to her people, but in the snow, it is as sad and quiet as anything. The flowers are like muted paper, breaking in the wind, though at least the candles are so numerous that they light up the gates, as if chasing off the dusk. The nearer they get, the more a shadow passes over Chrom.

Both of them dismount, finding it impossible to just pass into the gates without having stopped to look. 

"There are so many," Chrom says, quietly. "And they're still burning, even in the cold…"

Ada squeezes his hand a little tighter.

"They're keeping each other warm," she says. "Like the people."

Chrom exhales, long and slow, his breath fogging on the air.

"You're right," he says. "They are."

They stand in silence for a moment, Chrom staring into the candlelight, Ada watching the people. There are others gathered around the sprawling memorial, couples or trios here or there, some mothers and children, some older folk. She picks up on bits of conversation here or there –– no one says her name, but the subject of those hushed exalted tones are obvious enough. It puts a chill in Ada's bones unlike the wind or snow could, to think that this the path Chrom walks now.

She looks at him. His eyes are low, his lashes long enough to have caught a few snowflakes. She wonders what his father's funeral looked like, and if the castle was nearly torn apart by a mob like the manor had been, or if even a single soul had laid flowers or candles for him.

She wonders where Chrom will fall someday. Perhaps thirty and fallen in battle, valiantly protecting his halidom and his people. Flowers for a hero, no doubt. Perhaps fifty, aged and taken ill, and a modest outpouring of grief. Perhaps eighty, having long abdicated to a child –– oh, gods, _her_ child with him –– and much beloved. Perhaps he could match Emmeryn somehow, with enough time and good will.

Her heart trembles at the mere thought, these dark little impulses for a man she's barely started a life with, and Chrom looks to her.

"Prince Chrom?"

Both Ada and Chrom turn. There's a little girl at their side, perhaps ten or eleven at most. She looks up at him with a surprising confidence in her eyes, even as she dips into a quick and dutiful curtsy. She holds a bouquet of dried flowers, steely blue from age, the petals as delicate as butterfly wings, and she offers it to Chrom.

"Oh," Chrom says. "You want me to lay these for Emmeryn?"

The girl's eyebrows lift briefly, and then she shakes her head, ponytail wagging.

"No, Your Grace, they're for you," she says.

"For me?" Chrom repeats. 

The girl nods.

"I'm sorry about your sister," she says.

He breathes in sharply, suddenly, straightening up with the flowers in-hand. He swallows hard and Ada grips his arm a little tighter, a little more bracing. Chrom finds his voice again: "Thank you. Thank you very much."

The girl smiles and curtsies again, and then she flees, quick as she came. Ada and Chrom watch her barrel back into the waiting arms of her mother, who pulls her into a tight embrace and kisses the crown of her head. Ada meets the mother's gaze for a fleeting moment, and the woman smiles back at her and waves before taking her daughter and going.

As they walk away, Ada feels Chrom tremble a little –– just enough that it could be a shiver from the cold, at first, but then he stops in his tracks and ducks his chin, hood falling deeper over his face. Ada stops with him.

"Love," Ada says, softly. "Hey…"

She reaches for his face, to cup his cheeks between her mittens. He puts his hands over hers and smiles despite the tears choking him up.

"I'm okay," he says. "I promise. I'm okay."

"I know," she says. "I know."

"Gods," he murmurs, leaning in with her. "I really needed this day. I'm so glad I have you here with me. It's–It's been so lonely working without you, for _weeks_ …"

And there, not a hundred yards' walk from the gates of his castle –– _their_ castle –– she leans her forehead against her husband-to-be's, and she waits out this little storm, and all the world seems far, far away.


	5. Boundaries

.

 

When they get back up to the castle gates, a page boy at the gate gives them a good long look and then takes off running. 

"To Frederick," Chrom remarks. "They've been waiting on us."

Ada watches the boy run across the long front drive, as fast as his feet can take him, scarf flying at his heels. When the scarf blows off the boy entirely and drifts down into the snow, the boy doesn't even stop, even though the chill must reach his bones. Dedicated, no doubt, to warning the house that its Exalted Lord has returned, hours overlate. 

"Are we in trouble?" Ada asks him.

Chrom shakes his head.

"He'll understand."

Ada isn't so sure. They pass the page boy in the stairs, and the boy bows to them almost frantically and then makes himself scarce. That's how Ada knows Frederick is there waiting for them, even if he's not initially in view. While Chrom takes off his boots, Ada marches across the floor looking for him, still wrapped in all her winter gear.

"Hello?" she calls.

When she does spy Frederick, he's on the balcony. Ada almost dismisses the sight, but something has her taking a second look –– Frederick is standing right at the balcony's edge, toes against the short stone wall. His hands are spread on the railing and his entire torso pitches forward, and Ada feels a lick of alarm at the height they're at.

"Frederick?" she calls.

He ignores her, still staring out over the abyss. She repeats his name, more urgently, and Frederick turns to look at her.

"Yes, Ada?" he says.

And then he moves away, and he cranes his neck to see that Chrom is inside, too. Safe and sound. _Good enough_ , Ada supposes. She feels a need to calm her nerves, and she paces away from the door to shuck off her winter gear. Chrom is already doing the same, dropping his cloak over the back of a couch. Frederick picks up Chrom's coat immediately and goes to hang it up.

"We went for a little ride," Ada says. 

"I'm aware," Frederick says. He moves into her space and she pauses in hanging up her coat to look at him. He puts a hand out to accept her coat. It's actually a further distance to his hand than the coat hook, so she hangs up her coat herself and watches his face sour the slightest bit more.

"Milady, it is customary for me to hang up your coat for you," Frederick says.

"You haven't hung up my coat before," she says. 

"It is customary for milord's knight to hang up milord's fiancée's coat, then," Frederick says.

She glances at Chrom, who gives her a puzzled look. Not at Frederick, but at her. She can tell she's treading on toes, and not all that accidentally. Ada sighs and unhooks the coat again just to hand it to them. Frederick unruffles immediately, his big hands holding her coat like a fine silk, and he hangs it up in a way that seems no different than the way she had.

"Was that so difficult?" he asks.

"Was that really necessary?" Ada remarks. It feels rude to say, but it's no ruder than what he just said to her. The idea that his constant cloistering has been personal sticks at the front of her mind.

Frederick frowns deeply, but he says nothing. Ada elects to remain silent, too, save for a plaintative look in Chrom's direction. He doesn't seem to notice, and Ada thinks of Lissa's scowl, the dip to her voice when she'd called Chrom mean for not stepping in. And here it is, Chrom more focused on unlacing his boots.

"Dare I ask where you have been all day?" Frederick asks, dry as a desert. 

(He notes, surely, that she is sloppily dressed, and her hair has dried funny in the cold. Ada feels the lower half of her ponytail stick wetly to the back of her neck, a cogent reminder of tilting her head back, barely above the water line.)

Chrom grins a little when Frederick looks at him, doubly guilty in that he is so pink in the cheeks.

"I hope we didn't miss too much."

"All of dinner service," Frederick says. "And Captain Ronsenburg was looking for you earlier today. He seemed quite disappointed."

"Sorry, Frederick," Chrom says. "I'd have taken a shorter route if I'd known…"

Frederick looks them over and Ada feels not only his judgement, but his crystal clear assessment that they didn't just go for any ride around the castle. Ada contemplates telling Frederick off, but she gets the very clear sense that Frederick doesn't want her input, anyway.

"Are you hungry?" Frederick asks, curtly.

"Yes," Chrom says. "Do you think you could...?"

Frederick nods and straightens up immediately.

"I'll alert the kitchens. You should change into dry clothes, milord, before you catch cold."

There's a _go now_ in his voice that has Chrom moving like a scolded dog.

"Of course," Chrom says. "I'll do that right away."

He rises off the couch. Ada watches him go. Maybe it's better to let Chrom skirt away from Frederick's quarrelsome mood, even if it keeps her in the line of fire, but she also doesn't want to be alone with Frederick. He looks down at her with a stern expression.

"I know what you're thinking," Ada says, voice low. 

"I know better than to think slipping off was his idea," Frederick says, but that shows how much he knows. He scarcely bothers to lower his voice at all, which has Ada glancing towards their dressing room with some concern. "Did we not discuss this very issue the other day?"

"We did," Ada says. "And I stand by it being his choice. Don't upbraid me for helping him get a bit of reprieve from all of this."

"Reprieve?" Frederick replies.

"He deserves a break."

"And I wish there was time for one," Frederick says. "What are you _doing_ , Ada?"

Ada draws herself up. 

"What are _you_ doing, Frederick?"

Frederick frowns.

"I don't understand," she continues. "What are we arguing about now?"

There's a knock at the door.

Frederick shakes his head.

"We'll talk about this another time, when it won't just add to Lord Chrom's stresses," he says. His voice is carefully level. He turns away from her to go to the door, and he opens it promptly. Ada follows a couple steps to see who it is, and Captain Ronsenburg is there, looking rather hopeful. Ada catches his eye just around Frederick's silhouette, and he flashes her a smile.

"Good evening," the Captain says. "When I saw that page boy running in and out of here like he had wyverns on his heels, I had hoped it meant you'd returned."

"Not ten minutes ago," Frederick replies. "What can I do for you?"

"Forgive my plainness, but I wanted to invite Chrom to have a beer with me tonight.”

“Sick of Ylissean wines already?” Chrom asks. Ada turns; he is standing in the doorway, buttoning a fresh shirt from the bottom up. 

“I prefer to think about sampling some Ylissean ales, but you aren’t wrong, Your Grace,” the Captain chuckles. “Does your lady drink too?”

“She does,” Ada supplies.

“Excellent,” Basch replies. And then, effortlessly: “Care to join us, Sir Frederick?”

Ada sorely wishes, in that instant, that she could be around Frederick's other side to see his reaction. It's not an unrealistic question -–– he is, after all, a knight, and has a far richer bloodline than she does –– but it seems funny to her in that instant. She's not sure she's seen him ever drink more than a glass or two of wine.

"I shall gladly take you up on it," Frederick replies. "We will join you in the dining room for perhaps nine o'clock?"

The Captain nods.

"Very well, then," he says. "Nine o'clock."

He waves, a little jauntily, and turns around and disappears back down the stairs. For a moment the three of them just watch him go, smiling at the idea of beer by the fireside. Dinner, then.

"Do you have any more need of me before drinks, sire?" Frederick asks.

Chrom shakes his head.

"No, thank you, he says. "We can manage."

"Clothes for Ada, perhaps?" Frederick asks. "The tailors sent up some new pieces today."

Ada contemplates, for one fleeting instant, arguing. Telling him to stop with the dresses. Telling him to stop managing her, that her engagement to Chrom didn't include an overwhelming desire to have another person dote on her –– especially not from someone she has fought alongside in battle and trusted with her life in warfare, someone who she believes has more dignity than picking out her wardrobe.

"Okay," she says. _Compromise._

She stands there while he opens her new wardrobe. Inside are several hung pairs of leggings and trousers and a number of new tunics, but also some more dresses, several she could add to the collection of gowns she never intends to wear. The one he pulls out is simpler than anything else she's seen, a dark purple with gold buttons.

"The tailors hoped this would pique your interest," Frederick says, a little wearily.

"It's very lovely," Ada says.

She catches Chrom's sigh out of the corner of her eye. Frederick, of course, says nothing more on the subject.

"Well, I'll see you both come nine o'clock," Frederick says. "Shall I fetch you?"'

"I'll keep an eye on the time," Ada offers.

Frederick nods.

Off he goes, silent as before.

For a moment she and Chrom stand there, and she's not sure why the silence feels so odd. She turns to look at him, and he's watching the door. His shirt is still mostly unbuttoned, and he resumes buttoning it with a somewhat terse purse to his lips.

"Hey," Chrom says. "Can I ask something of you?"

"Hmm?"

"I don't care if you don't want to wear dresses or anything, but when Frederick wants to do something like hang up your coat, just let him," Chrom says. "I know it seems silly, but it makes him happy to do things like that."

"It's really no trouble for me to do it myself," Ada says.

"I know, but that's just what he does. It's his duty to take care of us, and he probably wants to feel helpful right now."

He says this as though Frederick is something small and endearing, like a puppy satisfied with a little bit of affection, rather than the very tall, very intimidating bear he is, with surly eyebrows and tree-trunk arms and all. Ada isn't sure whether she can take that seriously: it makes him _happy_ to hang up coats, like a doorman? Maybe Frederick is right to sigh at her and her complete lack of understanding for service, as she truly can't wrap her mind around that. Doesn't he want to be a _knight?_

He had always been fastidious and dutiful on the war campaign, but this is beyond that.

"Chrom, doesn't he have better things to do than pick out a wardrobe?" Ada asks. "Doesn't a knight do more in peacetime than act like a steward?"

Chrom's fingers slip on the last button, the one right under his chin that he otherwise never buttons; he sighs and Ada steps in to do it for him. She threads the button through the buttonhole and Chrom tugs at the collar immediately to see that it isn't too tight.

"Not while we're figuring out what to do," Chrom says.

"Is this really what he wants to be doing in the meantime?" Ada asks.

"He's looking out for us," Chrom says. "I'll admit I've been a little snappy with him too, but I can't begrudge him for trying to take care of us, Ada. And it means a lot to me that he's looking after you the way he does me, because I didn't ask him to do that." 

"It's not about wanting to hang up my own coat, Chrom," she says. "He's been picking _fights_ with me for weeks."

"I know he has," Chrom says. He reaches to cup her cheek, his thumb passing lovingly over the fullest point. "Trust me, I know. He's been my knight since I was born and nobody knows how to test his patience like I do. But you're new to him, and we've put this engagement on him at the worst time."

"Were we supposed to wait until this was over?" she asks. As if it was her idea, and now she must be scolded for it by her own fiancé. She's tempted to rub that in his face, but she holds her tongue. "He hasn't actually told me what his problem with our engagement is, he just wants to fixate on _dresses_ and _teas_ and what I'm doing with my _time_. He has too much respect for you to tell me how he really feels."

"He's not ready to talk," Chrom says, "and if I'm being honest, Ada, when he _is_ , he isn't going to turn to you. You can't take that personally."

Deep breath.

"It's a little hard not to," she says. Especially hard given he spent months accusing her of being a Plegian spy.

"Frederick isn't cut from the same cloth as you or I. He wants to do his job right now, and even if I don't like it, that's what we all need. A little bit of stability."

For a moment she stands here, between his hands, mulling it over. It _is_ reasonable. And so far, fighting him at every turn hasn't convinced him to change his ways, or keep the pampering to people who want it.

She'll do it for Chrom, she decides.

"You know what," she says, "even if he doesn't want to talk about how he's feeling, then I should at least talk to him about what's going on between us, and apologize for my own share of fight-picking. Maybe he'll meet me halfway if I try from that angle."

"Maybe the three of us can sit down after drinks," Chrom says.

"No," Ada decides. "I should talk to him now. It's my responsibility as well, and this has festered long enough. I'm not about to sit through hours of drinking with him when it's weird."

For a moment he's silent, mulling over the subject. He gives her a little squeeze and nods.

"Thank you," he says. "I'm glad, because I'd really love for you two to get along. And I'll talk to him later –– make sure we clear the air."

Chrom smiles and kisses her on the forehead, and she takes his face between her hands for a swift proper kiss right after. When she pulls from his arms, he lets his hands fall from her so slowly she thinks he might never actually let her go.

 

 

—⚜—

 

 

By time she's redressed and taking the stairs down, it occurs to her she doesn't know where Frederick goes when he isn't with them. 

That seems like such an oversight to her –– she's not sure when she got used to Frederick's consistency, his attention. Hadn't she poked fun at Chrom now and again for being so used to Frederick's attention that he scarcely pays attention to summons, or his tendency to forget to eat if a plate isn't placed in front of him? 

She knows he likes his warhorses, so he could be at the stable, though she's not sure why he would be at this hour. Perhaps with Lissa? Possibly, but maybe not probable. Lissa has been hardly any kinder in her grief. She thinks back: had it been mentioned to her? Yes, actually. She knows Frederick has his own quarters, and though there's no guarantee he's there, his quarters make most sense. Perhaps he is changing for drinks as well.

Ada lays her eyes on the nearest maid and tails her to a passageway to the servants quarters; a path she has never tread, nor even considered treading before this moment. The door to the servants quarters is made to blend into the wall, and Ada finds herself looking at it with a small measure of disdain. Despite not being a servant himself and his own aristocratic standing, Frederick keeps quarters amongst the servants to keep humble, and have access to the servants' passages in the castle. She imagines it also has its tactical advantages, being able to move around the hidden corridors of the castle in case of invasion or seige. If she weren't engaged to Chrom, she thinks that'd be a clever position for a tactician to be in as well.

She wonders if anyone would try to stop her, and if so, how soon she could find Frederick's quarters within. It can't be that hard.

So Ada walks in.

Inside, she can hear pleasant chatter floating out from the various rooms branching off the corridor. There are few people in eye sight, but they don't speak up, and so she walks the halls with eyes the size of saucers following her. It feels odd that none would ask her where she is going or tell her that she's out of place, but then again, she's now bride to the Exalt. Questionless, in a sense.

At the end of the first hallway, Ada meets the eyes of a young servant girl, a girl no older than twelve. The girl opens her mouth wide to say something, to exclaim something to go with her outstretched, pointing finger, but an older girl sweeps in immediately and clasps a hand over her mouth.

"Shh," the older girl says. She drags the offending finger down with a firm palm. "You can't go pointing at the Exalt's mistress!"

_Mistress?_

Ada pauses, gaze lingering on these girls who say nothing to her, as if she weren't even there. In her time here, she has barely spoken to the servants –– partly for no desire to impart demands or be spoiled by anyone, and partly for a lack of authority. Frederick has made all the arrangements, made it so she hardly have need to speak to any of them. And suddenly, Ada wonders if that was a mistake.

She had never imagined herself as mistress to Chrom, and for some reason the title leaves a sour taste in the back of her throat. What good are stories of her contributions to the war if she is so ill-fitted to life at court that her soon-to-be-husband's servants see her as a _mistress?_

Ada watches both girls slip away, out of sight entirely. She's not sure if she should have said anything to stop them, to question them, but by then it's too late.

She presses on.

It takes some time, but when she finally finds it, Frederick's room is evident from the half-open door, which bears a metal coat-of-arms; she's never seen his family's crest but the only person in the servants' quarters who might have heraldry is Frederick. _Blue for loyalty, argent for sincerity, black for constancy_ , that's what he had mentioned once. There's oak leaves for great strength, too, crowning the dragon-god Naga. Fitting, for a family that has long served the Exalt.

Ada creeps up to the doorframe, a hand raised to knock, but she catches sight of him and pauses.

He is sitting on a sofa, a book in hand, reading spectacles low on his nose. He thumbs the page a little before turning it. Whatever he's reading, he must be enjoying it; there's a little twitch to the corner of his mouth as he finishes a page, a little huff to his chest as he laughs under his breath. 

He hasn't noticed her, so she lets her eyes wander the room for a moment. It is plain, humble. The coat of arms is not the only piece of regalia, as the fireplace bears a similar family crest, and the mantle is laden with little frames, each with a drawing or painting of some sort inside. One is a handwritten note, the letters too far for her to read. She wonders, idly, who made these things for him, and if it was him who cherished them enough to frame them. Or who, she wonders, made the quilt draped over the back of the couch; she can't imagine a utilitarian like Frederick making such a thing.

He thumbs over another page. 

Ada feels a tightness in her chest watching him. It's odd, but she can't remember the last time she saw him so relaxed, if she ever even has before.  

Then his eyes rise to her. In his gaze, she feels his disapproval in her being here, his disapproval of her probing, of her questions, of her relentless need to confront opposition.

The wonder dissipates.

"Do you have no respect for boundaries?" he asks her.

She could tell him that it's her damn castle now, and that she has never once cared for protocol, but if she's being honest with herself, she's well aware it isn't her castle. She's well aware she's treading on boundaries, and that she'd done it deliberately. Wouldn't it be disingenuous to pretend otherwise, particularly when he knows better himself?

"I thought maybe you'd speak to me more honestly here," she says.

"Service knows no bounds," Frederick replies.

Ada slips in and closes the door behind her. It cuts the chatter of the servant's quarters away almost entirely. Frederick says nothing, eyes moving back to his book.

"Do the servants think I'm Chrom's… _mistress_?" she asks.

"It's a title given to anyone in a clandestine relationship with an Exalt," Frederick says, utterly stoic. "Until it is made public, that is about all it is to them."

"I'm a _tactician_ ," she says.

"And what have you done for Ylisse tactically in weeks, beyond sneaking her Exalt from court for little misadventures?" he asks her. "Lounging about in a four poster bed, taking hot baths and putting nice furniture in the snow? No, Ada. You shan't complain about the silver spoon you took upon yourself. You know better."

Gods, his points are sharper than his blade. 

Ada lingers close to the door, feeling very much like the space between them could be a canyon he is prepared to drag her into. A dozen potential retorts float up in her mind, like footsteps on a battlefield when a blade is swinging for her, but this is a very different sort of sparring.

"Listen. I know I haven't been the easiest person to deal with," Ada says. "And for once, I understand if you're angry with me. That's why I'm here to apologize."

_For once_ maybe wasn't the best choice in words, but it's not exactly untrue, either. They have spent months dancing around this argument about her loyalties, her history, her intentions, and it has not always been graceful. She has often thought his concerns reasonable. She has never understood them.

Frederick glances back at his book, and he takes his sweet time finding where he left off and placing a bookmark. He sets the book aside with such tediousness that Ada feels it's deliberate, not to give himself time to think but rather to make her wait.

_Petty bastard._

"I'm not angry," Frederick says, finally.

"Then what is this?" Ada replies. And then it spills out, faster and faster: "I thought maybe we'd put this to bed after Plegia, that maybe you'd understand I'm not a spy or an interloper, so what on earth are we arguing about? Why are we constantly dancing around each other, constantly looking for room to get a tooth in?"

"I have concerns about Lord Chrom," he says. "Concerns that are at odds with yours."

"Well, we're on the same side here," she says. "You know that I want what's best for him because you know I love him."

"I don't doubt that you love him," Frederick says. "Nor do I doubt that he loves you, and deeply at that. You mean a great deal to him."

"And you mean just as much to him, I'm sure," Ada says. "Very _differently,_ yes, but he'd be lost without you. With Emmeryn gone––" _There_ he flinches, and she watches something like pain ghost across Frederick's eyes. "––Well, with Emmeryn gone, it really is just you and Lissa left to him as family. So I'm just saying — he means something to you, and so _you and I_ are in this together, too. I want to put whatever this conflict is to bed. I don't want to do this for fifty, sixty, seventy years."

Frederick looks away. Ada watches his gaze travel across the sitting room, over spotless tabletops and polished candlesticks and pristine tapestries. He's inscrutable.

"Nor I, Ada," he says. "But it would be amiss of me to support him blindly, particularly when he is so vulnerable."

She pauses.

"What misstep has he made?"

Frederick levels her with a long, steady look. She knows the answer –– she knew it before the question left her mouth, before she strung it together in her head, before he muttered behind her back days ago. She knew the second she saw his face, his rapid, ruled professionalism, the moment he laid eyes on her wearing Chrom's ring.

"He's grieving and so his choices aren't earnest ones?" Ada asks. "You think he'll regret this? Get cold feet and ask for his ring back?"

"Oh, no," Frederick says. "He's a man of his word, and great integrity. He would never even think to hurt you in such a way."

Ada feels her heart wring.

"Then what's the issue?" she demands. "Am I some commoner plucked out of a field? Am I not dignified enough, do I not wear the right gloves for teatime or know how to shoot stags for fun? Is my prowess on the battlefield unladylike, my––"

"He proposed to you a week after his sister's death!" Frederick snaps.

She stops, startled. She knows that, but has he ever raised his voice to her?

Frederick sits straighter now, his spine taut like a bowstring, his chin up. She can see the little ripple of tension in his jaw. While she's considering whether to snap back, he stands up to his full height.

"I know quite well that I can be overbearing, but do you not see that there are good reasons for you to linger inside? Do you not see why you should attend teas with close friends and avoid tangling with ambassadors and the public? Do you not understand why I keep you close?" Frederick demands. 

Ada makes effort to pluck herself up, to grit her teeth and make fists and stand with her shoulders back.

"So what do you want from me, Frederick?" Ada demands. Her voice rises as she talks, like floodwaters drowning out her good works. "You don't want me in politics, you don't trust me to walk the castle alone, you don't want me in his bed, you don't want me to dress a certain way! What do I do to make you happy, just be more like Maribelle?"

"I don't want anything from you, except perhaps for you to trust that I am trying to help you find your place!" Frederick retorts. "I am trying to take care of you, to help you! It is what the halidom _needs_ from you!"

"The _halidom_?"

"Do you think this halidom cares at all about you and your happy engagement right now? Do you think anyone outside of your friends are concerned about _your_ place in court? No! Ylisse wishes to mourn! I understand that both of you would love nothing more than the skip right to honeymooning by the shore and making love all day, but this nation has just suffered an immense loss!" 

He's almost shaking, which calms Ada the slightest bit when she notices. To see him rattled feels about as victorious as it does dangerous, and she draws herself up to retort: _what of Chrom's personal losses? If this is what makes him happy, then––_

But he presses on:

"Can you even comprehend what she meant to us?" Frederick demands. "Is there any part of you that can fathom what is feels like to lose family, the woman who sacrificed _every day_ to bring us peace for near _twenty_ years? No, I imagine not. You don't even know what family is, do you?"

Ada's thought process dies, snuffed out.

All Ada can do is swallow her breath, but even that feels stuck.

"Emmeryn could have done a great many things in her life," Frederick continues, needlessly. "She could have found love as Chrom has, and we all could have seen her giddy looks, we could have laughed as she flaunted protocol to steal a kiss, we could have seen her welcome someone down the aisle to share a life with her. Her happiness would have been our happiness. She did not sacrifice everything so you and Lord Chrom could immediately…"

So she and Chrom could be what? She wants to spit at him, but she holds her tongue. If she's being honest, she's not sure that she could get it to work anyway. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she tells herself: _He's right._ And elsewhere, from a place that feels darker and puts a shadow on her very vision: _He has no idea who he's speaking to._

_"Flaunt_ your happiness, _"_ he says, finally.

He lets out a long breath through his nose. His shoulders seem to deflate, and he lets his gaze fall to the window.

"Well," he says, shaking his head. "I've said more than enough! Be gone."

Ada looks at him but he's gone, too, away in his thoughts.

Ada finds herself turning away, unsure of whether she's walking or sheer disgust has seized her and compelled her forward. Frederick says nothing to her retreating back –– just as well –– and she traces the servants' halls back, her feet feeling like lead. Even as she walks, she is tempted to go back, not to deliver some clever rhetoric but just to shout, to protest, to stamp her feet and seize him by his lapels and rattle him. Maybe she could rattle him enough to make him understand, it's not easy for her either, to be an interloper on this world, to have put herself in a position where her duties are undermined by her fiancé's title, to have not been clever enough, to have––

To have failed Emmeryn, too.

 

 


	6. Vulnerability

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo! Been real busy lately, but we're back.

.

 

 

"How did it go?"

Chrom is looking her way and smiling hopefully, and for that she has the distinct misfortunate of watching his smile fade when she doesn't have it in her to smile back. She'd taken her sweet time getting back to Chrom's quarters, if only to gather her thoughts, and maybe he'd seen that as a hopeful sign.

Maybe he'd thought she and Frederick had spent a lovely couple hours rubbing each others' backs and swapping tears over their shared (and unshared) strifes.

"Bad," she admits, "I didn't expect him to dress me down as much as he did, but I think it's what I needed to hear."

Chrom frowns.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

"I'm fine," she says, which is true. It hasn't killed her, though she knows it's going to nag at her for a little bit. That's the pity and blessing of being a strategist sometimes, she thinks. If a plan doesn't pan out, there's no sense in blaming anyone else but herself. Hearing a better plan is a challenge to be better, not buckling down on a bad plan.

(Doesn't mean it didn't sting, though.)

"You sure?"

She nods and leans over the back of the couch to swiftly kiss his head. Chrom reaches up for her, but she lingers just out of reach.

"Is _he_ okay?"

"Angry, but it's good that he got it off his chest."

"Is it going to be weird at drinks?" he asks.

She snorts and gives him an exasperated look.

"Probably, yes."

Chrom watches her, leaning an elbow against the back of the couch. He doesn't say anything, he just radiates concern. She's tempted to say something pithy –– _yes, you're very cute, but stop giving me those puppy dog eyes, I'm fine_ –– but it sounds overdefensive and unfair even in her head, so she doesn't let it reach her lips.

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Chrom says.

She looks at the dress Frederick had laid out for her. She eyes that dress as if every thread could unravel some truth, something obvious that she had somehow missed for the past few weeks. Ada had assumed they had all been chosen for some passive aggressive means of moulding her into the perfect wife with some begruding concessions. _Compromise_.

What if he hadn't been malicious at all?

She lifts up the dress and holds it up to herself in the mirror. It looks alien to her, far from the trousers and billowing coats she would normally wear. Even if Ada still doesn't see it as particularly tempting, it looks like it _might_ be flattering.

"That's pretty," Chrom remarks. "Are you going to wear it?"

"I wasn't planning to," Ada says. 

Chrom watches her a moment.

"Come here," he says, and he beckons her. She feels a little hesitant about it –– she'd sooner think through this than have anyone pat her head because she got snapped at –– but she's not about to decline being close to him.

She sinks into the couch with him. He's not satisfied with her next to him, however, and so he scoops her up under the knees and hauls her right into his lap.

"Chrom," she protests.

"Come _here_ ," he repeats, a little bossy. (She likes it a little.)

"I don't need to be coddled," she says, and when she gently starts to pry herself from his grip again, he locks down his arms around her and keeps her firmly in place.

"I know," he agrees, and he bumps her cheekbone with his nose. "But I want to anyway."

She huffs at him but relents, relaxing in his grip. _Fine_. He's warm.

"He can be harsh sometimes," Chrom says. "Once, when I was thirteen or fourteen, I deliberately ditched him in the woods… when he found me, I fully expected him to give me a hiding. The talking-to he gave me…"

He laughs, tucking her in under his chin.

"I think I would have preferred it, to be honest."

"Why did you run off?" Ada asks. His breath is warm on her temple.

"I was sick of him dictating my schedule," Chrom says. "I didn't want to do schooling anymore, or sit through boring meetings. I didn't want to take dance classes or learn charity patronages or learn how to be an estate manager or attend engagements. I wanted to pick up a sword and never put it down. That's all I wanted to do."

"So running off in the woods was supposed to stop that?" she asks.

"I could have lived in the woods and cut down trees with my sword all day," he says.

"What a terrible plan."

Chrom grins –– she feels it against her scalp, in the way his grip on her tightens a bit.

"Yeah? What was _your_ plan?" he asks.

At first she's stunned, and then a laugh bubbles out of her; she tries to wrestle herself from his grip but he doesn't let her go, and she stays pinned under his broad arms. There's something oddly pleasant about being teased by him –– _only_ by him.

"Shut _up,_ " she tells him, pressing a kiss to his bicep.

"My point _is_ ," he says, "he knew the value of those things to me, even if I didn't… and I wish I'd listened then, like I should have listened yesterday. I _still_ need to keep that in mind."

She looks up at him, but they're so close that her nose just bumps his chin. He sighs a little, grip on her tightening just the slightest bit more, and he presses a kiss to her forehead. She cozies in. Maybe a little coddling isn't so bad, especially when he's saying the things she'd like to avoid herself. It soothes him, too, and she can feel him relaxing, to be able to soothe her.

Compromise.

 

—⚜—

 

Captain Ronsenberg is standing by the fireplace when Chrom and Ada enter –– the very same fireplace where she had spoken with Cordelia and Gregor just days ago. To Ada's surprise, Lissa is there too. Her usual ponytails are absent tonight, and her modest circlet does little to contain her loosed hair. She looks sunnier than she has in weeks, and without the frills and ponytails she looks quite a bit closer to her eighteen years than she usually does. Ada wonders where this change in spirit came from, but then again, Lissa is more resilient than most.

“I didn't know you were coming,” Chrom says.

“Well, you don’t get to leave me out of all the fun,” Lissa says. She smiles, and Ada watches it pass to Chrom almost infectuously.

Frederick isn't there, and Ada wonders if perhaps he declined to come after all. The thought makes her a little apprehensive, having to answer _why,_ but she'll cross that bridge when they come to it. For now, she vows to go a little easy on the drink.

Captain Ronsenberg smiles watching them, and Chrom extends a hand to shake; it seems ludicrously informal even to Ada, but both men are at ease with it, as if they were old friends. Ada feels herself relax. 

"Your Grace," the Captain says, and he leans in to kiss Ada's hand again. "Lady Ada."

"Captain," Chrom replies, smoothly. "And if we're drinking tonight, you should just call me Chrom."

The Captain chuckles.

"Then you may call me Basch, if you so wish," he says.

"Basch it is, then," Chrom replies. "And thank you. Whenever anyone says _Your Grace_ , I have the urge to look over my shoulder."

"Ah," Basch says. "A heavy title to bear, so soon."

Chrom nods.

Basch pauses for a beat, seeming to mull a thought over in his head, and then he says: “I don't think I had mentioned, but I was still ten days from Ylisse when I heard. The messenger was about to drop dead from exhaustion. He was panicked, thinking he might have missed us at port. Horrified that we might reach the castle uninformed, unprepared to greet a new Exalt and grieve Ylisse’s golden sun.”

Chrom’s smile tenses slightly.

“You didn’t think of turning back?” he asks.

“Not at all,” he replies. “It felt even more necessary to go, to discover where Ylisse would stand going forward.”

Chrom nods again.

"Well, after our argument the other day, I look forward to our friendship," Chrom says. "To build bonds between our nations."

"Verily so," Basch replies. And then: "Ah! Sir Frederick."

Ada and Chrom both turn to the door. Sure enough, there is Frederick, looking smart in white breeches and a dark blue frock coat. Ada's not sure she's ever seen him dressed so impractically, but then again, she's never seen him casually with guests before, either. Regardless, Ada watches his attention sail by her. Understandable.

"It's been a while since you've drank with us," Chrom grins.

"I find it difficult to keep up with you and the Shepherds these days, milord," Frederick replies. His eyes rove over the group.

"Getting old?" Lissa teases.

"Perhaps," Frederick says.

Ada feels like she hasn't breathed in a while. And then, for a moment, Frederick locks eyes with her. He looks quite calm. Though Ada feels that outwardly she may be the same, she wonders if his gut is churning the way hers is. It's odd. All the gutsy battle plans, all her willingness to set aside the rules of engagement to ensure victory, the hard push that had led them to putting Gangrel in the ground, and she'd never felt anything but assured of herself when facing conflict. That confidence has left her, and she's sure she knows why.

Frederick is no enemy.

And then he says, a touch surprised:

"You wore a dress, Ada."

Ada bites back her sigh of relief in favour of a smile. They can talk about peacemaking later, but there's enough of a twitch to the corners of his mouth that she knows the gesture is a start.

"Thank you for laying it out for me," she says.

"It's nice," Lissa chimes in, and then immediately steamrolls on: “So what are we drinking tonight?”

“It's all the same when it's cut with water, Lissa,” Chrom says.

Lissa whaps him in the arm, putting on an almost comical pout. 

“I’ll have a beer if I want.”

“Have you ever even drank beer?”

“No, but I might as well start!”

Ada catches Basch’s smile a moment before a hearty chuckle bubbles from him. She finds herself smiling too, and she says: “You know, they’re always like this.”

“That they are,” Frederick agrees, only to have Lissa clasp her hands together at her chest and lean into his side.

“I’m drinking beer tonight,” she says. It’s only half an order — the rest is looking for his approval. Frederick shakes his head.

“Just one,” he says. “Any more and I will be nursing both your head and your stomach in the morning.”

“Looks like Lissa’s getting drunk tonight,” Chrom remarks. When Frederick gives him a raised brow, he grins: “She’s going to ask for another and you’re going to let her have it.”

"Just one," he repeats.

"Chrom's right," Lissa interjects.

"Ah," Frederick says. "Well, Princess, that's on _your_ insistence, not _my_ leniency."

Basch chuckles.

"Something tells me that isn't so uncommon, with a lord and ladies as enthusiastic as these," he says. "How often do you find yourself shepherding these three into their beds in the small hours of the morning?"

"Until Ada came to us barely a year ago, it had been these _two_ ," Frederick corrects him. "But even so, not terribly often. Beer is generally a commoner's drink, after all, and these two would never drink wine to that excess. But when there's cause to celebrate, Lord Chrom has friends from all walks of life, and beer is the drink of the people."

The five of them watch as a pair of maids roll in a large cask on a grooved wooden trolley. The cask is big enough to fill the bellies of a much larger party, but Ada supposes there are few small gatherings in the castle supplied with beer. She watches with a mild curiosity as they tap it –– she can't imagine they're about to drink the bitter and often slurry beers found on the war trail.

“It’s a commoner’s drink in Dalmasca as well, but on the war campaign it travels harder and heartier than any claret," Basch says. "I must confess to a fondness for it even at home, as I have many good memories of travel.”

“And you guessed Chrom would feel the same,” Frederick replies. “Clever.”

“I’ll take beer over wine any day,” Chrom agrees.

“Good beer prolongs life, clears away ill-humors, revives the heart and restores youth,” Frederick says in the slow, relaxed tone. He strides to the ready tap and takes a tankard from a maid and fills it himself. He closes the tap only when his tankard threatens to overflow, even when the foam is already dribbling down the side. Frederick wipes it clean, a little too fastidiously, and passes the tankard to Ada.

"Thank you," she says. She nudges Chrom in the side. "That's not his favourite drink, though."

"What is?" Basch asks.

Chrom has the good sense to look a little embarrassed. Lissa opens her mouth to supply an answer when it seems like he won't, but Chrom raises a hand to shush her so he can confess himself.

"Rum," Chrom admits.

"Ah!" Basch laughs. "Too sweet for me, I'm afraid. You must be terrible fun."

Chrom grins a little, and he glances at Frederick, who actually smiles, long-suffering as it might be. Ada isn't sure if the mere idea of drinking is putting them both at ease, but it's pleasantly surprising to see. 

Frederick continues to pass out drinks, and so she takes her first sip. The foam makes it almost creamy on her tongue, the smell almost as powerful as the taste. It's good. Far better than on the war trail, that is for certain.

"Yes, he is terrible fun. Get a good bit of drink in him and he becomes a most affable rogue. If it weren't for its effect on his competitive streak, he could get away with excess more often," Frederick says.

"I'm both looking forward to and dreading the day I see that," Ada remarks.

"Your wedding day!" Lissa chirps.

"Soon, then!" Basch agrees. "It's been rare that I've gone to a wedding and not watched the wedding party get more and more eased with drink."

"Actually," Frederick interjects. "It might be some time before the wedding. There's much to be done."

Chrom sighs in a way that Ada feels rather than hears, the thrum of it passing from his arm to hers where they brush together. Basch gives them a mild look. Ada skims her lower lip with her teeth and then speaks up.

"On the heels of war," she says, "the nation needs time to heal."

"Whatever we need to do to get the nation back on its feet, first," Chrom says.

Basch raises his tankard.

"A dedicated duo," he says.

A brief, flickering moment of silence falls upon them. Ada feels Chrom's fingers drift down her hip and then fall aside. She looks to Frederick -– how could she not look to Frederick? –– and he gazes back, his composure only skin deep. His eyes are a little unsettled.

But then Frederick nods.

"Both of them have good heads on their shoulders," he says. "They'll do right by Ylisse together."

Ada hopes he believes that.

 

—⚜—

 

"You know, though, their engagement was so sudden!" Lissa remarks. 

Lissa bats her eyelashes at all of them from across the table; she's hardly a romantic, but she's not pragmatic like Maribelle, poring over finding a suitable father for her someday child, nor clinical like Miriel, artfully weighing the purpose of marriage beyond the legal or the societal. 

Largely, Lissa wants to make fun of her brother.

Ada thinks there's never been a more welcome time for it, at Chrom's expense or not. It keeps the mood light.

Now Lissa rests her chin in her hands, and Ada watches Frederick's eyes drift to her elbows on the table. 

Lissa barrels on: "It was really surprising, I don't think any of us expected it at the time. I mean, you knew they were going to be together, but right then?"

"It was a little… sudden," Chrom admits.

"I hadn't heard the story," Basch remarks. "Still haven't, actually."

"It's _insane,_ " Lissa says, empathetically.

"Lissa," Frederick says, pointedly. "Your beer."

She's sloshing it. Lissa takes a sip and then pushes it a little further from her wrath. Ada watches an unspoken laugh reach Basch's eyes just watching her, and in that moment, Ada completely welcomes her brand of can-do conversation to break up the moodiness.

"Can I tell him, Chrom?" Lissa asks.

"Oh, you can't tell it," Chrom replies. "You're going to make it embarrassing."

Basch chuckles.

"Because you're a bad storyteller," Lissa says. "You get impatient with your own story and you skip right to the end."

"That's not untrue," Ada says.

"Then I guess Ada is telling it," Chrom says. Ada gives him a pointed look, but he smiles over the rim of his tankard. "Lissa's all over the place, and I'm too impatient. I guess that leaves you."

Ada smiles to be polite. Frederick could tell it as well, but she's grateful that Chrom hasn't left an open invitation to it. She turns her eyes to Basch, who shifts back in his seat comfortably.

"Well," she says. "It's not really a happy story…"

"And still one of the happiest things to happen these past few weeks," Basch says.

"I suppose," Ada says.

"Go ahead and tell it, then."

"Alright."

She plucks herself up.

"When we fled Plegia, we had to escape through mountains. We were all half-dead at that point, sick with grief and exhaustion. I remember running my lips together and despite the rain, they were so dry they could have cracked. I fell ill, too. Bad enough that I very seriously contemplated leaving in the night, because I knew I was dead weight at that point, and they would be, too, if they slowed down on my account…" 

She trails. 

"They didn't let me, though. They saw through whatever lunancy I was mumbling with fever, whatever fool idea I had about crawling away to die… they stuck by me."

"Of course we did," Lissa says. "Also, Chrom would have never forgiven us if he'd returned to find you gone."

"When we made it out of the mountains, I was still sick for most of the journey home. I slept a lot after the worst was over, but what I remember being awake for, Chrom was always there, even if it was just to bring me food, or wipe my forehead. Any one of our healers could have done it, but it was him."

"At one point, you woke up just to hurl and he held your hair back," Lissa interjects. "That's when I would have known."

"Lissa," Frederick says, somehow managing to tread the thin line between patience and exasperation. "Let her tell it."

"It's okay," Ada says. It's funny, anyway. "There was a lot he could be doing, or he could have even just taken time to himself, nobody would have begrudged him that, but he chose to spend his time with me, and Lissa."

"It was better to keep my mind off things," Chrom says. He reaches to take her hand, bracing. "I think you were well worth it."

Ada smiles.

"I'm glad. And it was a long trip home, and we spent a lot of time talking towards the end about just about anything and everything. And we've always talked a lot –– I can't count how many times over the past year we've talked until we've fallen asleep." (Frederick raises a brow here, but it should hardly come as a surprise to him.) "And at first we were talking about something silly, about something we wanted to try in peacetime, and then suddenly we were talking about how everything had changed, and about us, and what would happen to everyone. To the whole continent, too. It felt overwhelming, to think of how wide open the future was."

Chrom looks away, but his grip on her hand shifts, the pad of his thumb running across her knuckles. He looks as though he doesn't care to listen, but it's fair to say it. Ada knows it is. He knows it is.

"And then Chrom started weeping," Ada says, a little softer. She feels Chrom's fingers fall still on hers, his gaze falling a little low, but she turns her eyes to Frederick. "And my heart broke, because I realized because I had failed to save Emmeryn, I had failed him too. He had become this person I had made the center of my entire life, and I had failed him. Until that moment, I didn't realize _just_ how deeply I cared for him, that seeing his pain could strike me to the core. And I knew…"

"Ada," Chrom murmurs, a little nervously.

She runs her thumb over his.

"And that I was just as responsible for that future as he was, and I told him I wanted to share in that with him."

"So you proposed?" Basch asks, surprised.

Chrom's eyes drop entirely, and he goes a pleasant shade of pink.

"Not… not _exactly_ ," he says.

"I don't remember who said it first but I think we came to that conclusion at the same time!" She smiles, suddenly, as she remembers. "He was so bashful."

"Just as he is right now," Basch says.

"Well, thank the gods you didn't tell them what I sounded like when I _first_ told you how I felt," Chrom says. "With that level of detail, I might actually die of embarrassment."

"I think it's meant to be, then, if you could come to that conclusion at the same time," Basch says.

"Well, yes," Chrom says. "I think I would have proposed to her within the year if I hadn't done it then, so it wasn't impulsive for that reason. It was impulsive because I didn't have the ring picked out yet, I didn't plan anything romantic, I didn't even kiss her at the time. It just sort of tumbled out of me. If I didn't ask her to marry me then, I'd explode."

"We were _almost_ back at the castle," Lissa reminds him. "There was time, you could have done it less… foolishly."

"I know," Chrom says, "but I was afraid that I'd never have the chance. What if fire rained from the sky and killed us on the spot? What if an assassin popped out of the bushes and slew us both? What if my heart stopped and I just dropped dead?"

Ada finds her gaze dropping to her beer, or at least the scarce little bit at the bottom of her tankard. She tips the tankard and watches it roll, dark amber and darker still where it thickens. She'd had those thoughts too. What if they died? What if she'd perished in the mountains, soaked to the bone and stricken with the flu? What if Chrom had fallen in battle against Gangrel, too blinded by his rage to swing Falchion true? 

"Emmeryn said she'd take a partner when she was sure that Ylisse was strong enough that she could step away for even just a day or two," Chrom says. "And that day never came, so I'm not about to wait. That's not a sacrifice I can make."

"Milord," Frederick rumbles, and Ada feels her nerves jump on edge. He says: "It was not a sacrifice she made. It was a choice, in order to better serve the halidom, and to be there for you and Lissa."

"Maybe so," Chrom agrees. "But in all these years, she never had anyone -– as far as I was ever told or saw, she had never even been kissed before, let alone fallen in love."

Frederick nods.

"If she did, it was kept very private," he says.

(Not for the first time this week, Ada has a quiet thought that Frederick knows much more than he lets on.)

"So what if she _never_ found someone?" Chrom asks. "Or what if she met someone and didn't care for them, but knew it was a marriage that would benefit Ylisse, and did it anyway?"

"Then it's a choice she would have made," Basch suggests. "I doubt your fine sister would have seen the possibility for securing peace in marrying some warmongering dog, or thought that she could stop political quarrel with matrimony. She would know that marriage is best used as a tool for strength, not reparations."

There's a long pause, most of them busying themselves with their beers, but Chrom lets his tankard sit untouched for a moment. Ada watches the thoughts tumble around in his head, mulling over how to best pin them down with words, and then Chrom asks:

“But you never took a wife, Basch?”

Basch shakes his head.

“Duty has always been my first calling.” 

“Same for Frederick,” Chrom remarks. “He’s pledged his service to our family since before before I was even born, and never once has there been anyone like that in his life."

"A dedicated man," Basch comments. He smirks. "Or at least a sly one."

Chrom gives an amused noise. Frederick just smiles.

"Sly?" Chrom says. "I don't think Frederick has a sly bone in his body, unless you count tricking Lissa into eating her vegetables."

"Hey!"

"I do confess to having slipped more cabbage onto her plate when her attention was elsewhere," Frederick remarks. "But what milord says is true. I must confess my priorities have been very narrow, and there are few women who could understand such dedication."

"Well," Basch says. "You're a man of how many years to my fifty? Forty, perhaps?"

"Closing in," Frederick says.

"There should be some hope for you yet, then," Basch says. "Should you choose to take a wife, at least."

"Of course there's hope," Chrom says. Frederick raises an eyebrow and Chrom smiles. "Lissa and I have encouraged him over the years with the thought that maybe he'd like to have a family of his own to dote upon."

Ada watches something hover on the tip of Frederick's tongue, the way he watches Chrom and takes a short breath in, but he says nothing. Instead he just reaches for his tankard and drinks from it, eyes lowered.

"For what it's worth, a life of duty is a good life, and life well-served; I have certainly never felt lacking for not having taken a wife, nor had children," Basch says. "But for you two to have each other in life, in battle, in fortifying Ylisse –– you will find a different strength in that, I'm certain."

"I already do," Chrom says.

"The two of us are stronger together," Ada agrees.

"Once Ylisse is finished grieving, I'm sure it will be delighted to see what her future holds, with Chrom and Ada," Frederick says. "And Lissa, too, when her time comes."

Lissa makes a bit of a face.

"Slow down a second," Lissa says. "Just because he's engaged doesn't mean you can move pressure onto me."

"Why not?" Frederick asks. "Now that Lord Chrom will be ushering in a new era of peace, we can take advice from Captain Ronsenberg, and marry you off to strengthen ties between nations."

"What?" Lissa says. "No way."

"I'm afraid so, Lissa," Chrom adds. "We're going to have to keep diplomatic relationships open with Ferox."

"You wouldn't dare," Lissa declares, and Chrom jerks suddenly in his chair, having likely been nudged in the knee quite firmly by her dainty little shoe.

"Easy!" Chrom says, but a troublemaking grin spreads across his mouth regardless. "Tell you what –– we'll call a truce on the subject until Ada and I have a baby, _then_ we'll talk about who you're marrying."

"Chrom!" Lissa groans.

Basch chuckles and nods his head towards Frederick.

"Well, if you do find a wife, then you need not have children. You already have these two."

"I'd hope my own children would behave themselves in front of distinguished guests," Frederick says. "But I'm not sure that it would suit me, to be honest."

"What?" Lissa exclaims. "If you took HALF as good of care of your kids as you did me and Chrom, then your kids would be spoiled beyond belief, and they'd still be the best behaved kids in the world!"

"Lissa," Frederick says, patiently. He chooses to slide her tankard away from her this time. The next sip he takes is out of hers, and as measured as each one before it. Ada feels a little sad for him, in that moment; for all the conversations they've had about his dedication to their family, so much has been about duty that there's been precious little about what his personal tastes are.

"Do you not want children, Frederick?" Ada asks.

He seems to mull that over for a second.

"I do," he says, finally. "Provided the right woman, of course. But wanting children is not the same as being able to provide for them the way I would like."

"What couldn't you provide for a child, though?" Ada presses. 

Frederick shakes his head; perhaps a dead end until Chrom grips her hand a little tighter and says: "Despite our family lineage, Frederick, I wouldn't hold your children to serving mine."

And that gives Frederick even more pause. He sets the tankard back on the table and moves it between two great palms. Ada's gaze drifts from Frederick to Basch, who watches the Ylissean folk with an appraisal that she's not unfamiliar with. Basch catches her gaze and smiles a touch, and so Ada turns her eyes back to Frederick.

"I haven't often spoken of my own family, even to you two," Frederick says. "But I suppose since you, milord, are almost married, and Lissa is a young lady now, and we can drink together like this…"

Chrom nods, rather seriously. Ada finds herself shifting to the edge of her seat, something she finds mirrored in Lissa's very wide, very round eyes. 

"My father was a rather serious man, and I, as the youngest of a handful of brothers and sisters, often felt his duty took him away from us. We were all of us raised in service to the royal family, to Lord Chrom's father, and his father before him, and so on." Frederick swills his drink again. "Perhaps we were meant to understand his business even as children, and see why he could not tend to us the way our mother did, or why he would go tend to someone else's children first."

"You're worried that your children would resent you because you spent more time with me than them?" Chrom asks. There's a little pinch to his brows, but his voice is soft.

"In some sense, yes," Frederick says. "But the other concern is something my father told me when I was a boy that has never left me. Not once."

The four of them watch him, waiting for him to continue, but Frederick takes a long drink from his tankard. When he sets it down, he fixes his gaze on Basch.

"He didn't tell it to me, actually. He spoke it aloud when he thought I was asleep, after we'd quarreled. He said that the pity of being a parent is that it cursed you to love someone who would never truly understand the depth of your love for them. I realized then that his greatest strife in life was not that we loved and obeyed him, but that we could never understand how much we were loved. That was duty to him."

Basch lets out a long, slow sigh. Lissa makes a quiet disappointed noise. Ada glances aside at Chrom, who suddenly looks somewhat disconnected from the subject, as though he had been read a complex math equation, and she feels that in herself, too. She feels moved by the concept but numbed as a person. She has never known children nor been someone's child, to her memory.

What could it mean to care that much for someone and not feel it matched?

"That is dutiful indeed," Basch says, finally. "Some of that rings true in how I've felt about my own charges. But not being a parent, I cannot say whether that is the same as duty I've felt to my Queen, or my little lords or ladies." 

"I don't know how true it is either, or how much is just how I felt at the time, hearing that," Frederick agrees. "But the possibility has frightened me. When I think about the way I have doted on Chrom and Lissa, and how it has overwhelmed them at times, I worry that if I had a child of my own, I would become the most overbearing man on the planet, and still they would not understand the depth of my love and devotion to them."

He pauses.

"Or, worse," Frederick says, with a small shake of his head. "What if they felt as neglected by me as I felt, at times, at my own father's hands?"

Ada watches his eyes move to her, calm and resigned. She feels tempted to look away, unsure of what to do with this vulnerability – _– is_ it vulnerability? –– but how could she, given the way she has dismissed his doting?

"To say the least about how I felt for Emmeryn," he adds.

"Frederick," Chrom says, a bit of a frown on his voice. A concern.

"There's no need to reassure me, milord," Frederick replies. "I'm not looking for it."

"Still," Chrom says. "I don't want you to think that Lissa and I aren't grateful for everything you do for us. And I also don't want you to think that we'd feel even a second of resentment if you wanted to get married and have your own children, and spend time with them."

Frederick nods.

"Thank you, milord," Frederick says. "But given there is no such woman on my horizon, I don't think it's much of a concern."

There's a little lull in the conversation, a moment in quiet. Maybe, Ada thinks, a necessary one.

 

—⚜—

 

The clock in the hall chimes at midnight. Though the conversation has yet to flag beyond the occasional pause between stories, it is this moment that has Frederick looking at the time and then quietly judging each person at the table, and Ada knows he is figuring when he shall dismiss each person to bed, as he is wont to do. It's hardly a holiday, and there's little excuse to be sleeping late in the morning. (Lissa won't need telling; she is already dozing in her chair, slouched to the side so that she can lay her head on Frederick's shoulder.)

"I think I shall put Lissa to bed now," Frederick says. "And perhaps retire myself, if these two have had enough for one evening."

Ada watches Basch's eyebrows furrow the slightest bit. 

"Just a moment, Sir Frederick," Basch says. "Before you go."

His time has bided for something, Ada knows, and now he reaches across the table and lays a hand on Chrom's. Chrom looks tempted to pull it away, confused by the gesture, but he holds fast.

"Milord, if I may change the subject to something serious," he says.

Chrom seems a little surprised.

"Of course," Chrom says.

"Is this wise, when we've been drinking all evening?" Frederick asks.

"I'm fine," Chrom says, rather soberly.

"Well, then I must confess that I did not invite you to drink tonight just to tell stories and jokes," Basch says. "Fortunate as it has been to have good company that stories come so easily, I invited you here because I do have some questions about Ylisse's future. Ones I would not see play out in court."

Ada frowns immediately, and the change in tone does little for Chrom and Frederick's moods. Both sit a little straighter, Frederick slow and easy to not disturb Lissa, a hand on her round cheek.

“I don’t mean any threat,” Basch says. “I say it out of concern. Ylisse is an old kingdom, but it has been rendered new by your sister's grace and peacemaking. Not for centuries has Ylisse been as quiet as it was under Emmeryn's rule. Now, I have shepherded young rulers in the past, and I have seen them snuffed out. And so I wonder –– how prepared you are to face the world as Exalt, especially when there are nations that would take advantage."

“I bet your pardon?” Frederick says. His voice dips low, more graveled.

Basch bows his head to Chrom briefly.

"It's not a history I would see repeated. Would you speak with me on it?"

Chrom is very quiet, and he sets down his tankard and pushes it away from him.

"Yes," he says. "Let's hear it."

 

 

.


	7. Counsel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hereby dub this chapter my very own Council of Elrond.

.

 

 

 

"Go ahead and take Lissa up to bed," Chrom says. "We'll wait to start talking until you get back."

Frederick doesn't seem convinced, but even so he nods and rises to his feet. He gathers Lissa into his arms as if she were still a tiny child, and she wakes just enough to put her arms around his neck, murmuring something that doesn't quite reach Ada's ears. Frederick tucks her against his chest, and then with a raised brow, he looks down at Ada.

"Ada?" he says, leadingly. _You too_ , it seems, or maybe _be on your watch_.

"Do you want to go to bed, too?" Chrom asks.

Ada's gut says no. In fact, all of her says no. She shakes her head diligently.

"I'd like to stay," she says.

"Then you'll stay," Chrom says.

Frederick nods, shifting Lissa just the slightest bit higher in his arms.

"I'll be back in a moment, then."

They watch Frederick go. He slows up by the door to pivot, as to not thump Lissa's dangling feet against the frame, and then he's gone. The three of them remain sitting in cool silence, each holding their tankards as though more beer in their bellies could soften the change in tone. Basch still seems relatively at ease compared to Chrom; considering Basch's supposed breadth of experience, she imagines he was prepared for a great many things tonight.

If Ada's being honest, she's not sure how prepared Chrom is for criticism without a blade in his hand. And perhaps that's Basch's entire goal –– to prepare him for the criticisms he will face, the attempts on his rule and his life. She looks at Chrom sidelong. His jaw is squared in a way that looks obviously uncomfortable.

" _Breathe,_ Chrom," Ada says.

Chrom exhales hard. Basch looks vaguely amused, his forehead creasing when he raises his eyebrows. 

"While we're waiting, I'm going to step out for a moment, too," Basch says. "I'll give you a moment, Chrom."

With the amount they've been drinking, Ada can relate, but she'd rather wait than wrangle her dress. Instead, as Basch exits, reaches over to Chrom's arm. The thick muscle of his forearm is tensed so hard his flesh feels like stone. Chrom casts a furitive look at the door, and when it closes behind Basch, he lets out a long, beleaguered groan.

"Don't be nervous," she says.

"I'm not," he says. 

Ada sighs and stands up. He pushes his chair back immediately and she leans into his lap, the two of them moving as if this had been planned. He murmurs something unintelligible against her and she leans in to kiss his forehead.

"I'm serious," she says. " _Breathe._ "

"I _am_ breathing," he says, voice slipping a little bossily. He wraps his arms around her, which Ada doesn't like much given she'll want right back out of his lap the moment Frederick or Basch come back, but he's just going to get worked up more if she pulls away.

Ada tousles his hair back, and she watches his cowlick spring back in place as her fingers pass. 

"Just keep your cool and it'll be fine," she says.

"I know," he says. "I just wish he'd said something tomorrow instead of ending tonight on sour note."

She could tell him that it isn't going to be soured, they don't know that, but Ada knows how probable it is that Chrom will be leaving this room fired up. She leans into his body, fit to him like pieces of a puzzle, and she lays an arm around his shoulders. She thinks of his outburst at the dinner: _Do you think I don't know how to lead my halidom?_

She hopes, idly, that Basch is ready for a fight.

 

—⚜—

 

 

"Do you remember much of your father's rule?" Basch asks.

Chrom's expression flickers; the wall of his chest is too thin, Ada knows, and so his heart is easily exposed. Basch hardly seems malicious about it, but it puts Chrom ill at ease just the same. Ada looks to Frederick, who has folded his arms against the table's edge.

"No," Chrom says. "I was only four when he died."

There's a pause.

"Did you ever meet him?" Chrom asks.

"Once," Basch says.

"You didn't like him," Chrom says. "I can hear it in your voice."

If not in the tone of his voice, then certainly in the sober expression on his face. Ada finds herself immediately curious, far more than she had been previously. Basch just nods.

"Tell me," Chrom says.

"Perhaps you remember this, Frederick," Basch says. "It would have been in Chrom's second year. We'd watched his father pillage Plegia for well over a decade at that point. It seemed Ylisse was on the cusp of conquest in Valm, too; your father had ships sailing the contours of the continent, testing the borders. Probing for signs of resistance."

"I remember," Frederick says. His voice dips to something akin to a warning: "I have never told Chrom this story."

"Do you object to me telling him now?" Basch asks.

" _Tell me_ ," Chrom repeats, a little impatiently. Frederick just gestures to go ahead, his opinion hidden and his expression neutral. 

"Well, then," Basch says. "When the nations of Valm saw Ylissean threat at its borders, they sent warning to Ylisse. In turn, your father invited ambassadors to this very castle. Many of the Valmese Alliance chose not to send delegates, fearing it was a ploy for information. Many others chose to go –– if not to attempt to make peace, then to head off whatever your father had planned."

_Your father, your father._ Ada wonders if it is mandate to not speak this man's name –– the shame of his conduct as Exalt and ruler so terrible that to deny his name is to condemn him to the past. It extends to the rest of the castle as well, with empty spaces where portraits might be, or curiously arranged paintings where someone who must have been a focal point has been painted out entirely. No one refers to his laws or deeds, good or bad. Who was he, beyond a tyrant?

"There was no war with Valm," Chrom says. "So you succeeded?"

Basch smiles tersely.

"At avoiding open war, yes," he says. "Discussions with your father were difficult; he was a man who was well aware of what he was hated for, and he was not afraid to highlight it in conversation."

"I've been told that before," Chrom says.

"But no one told you he killed an ambassador during an evening of drinking?" Basch asks.

Ada feels a chill settle on the room, even though the fire has hardly died. Basch seems to wait for Chrom's unsettled look to pass, and Frederick's frown deepens. Ada thinks she feels Chrom twitch, the little lock of his muscles as he prepares himself in case of defense, even against a confessed friend. She feels it too. 

"No," Chrom says. "Why did he…?"

Chrom trails. He knows. A part of him knows. Ada can only surmise, and yet she knows she wouldn't come up far from the truth.

"A countrywoman of mine –– indeed, the knight I trained under –– feared all-out war," Basch says. "And so, she invited your father to drink one evening. I imagine your father expected some sort of intrigue, or an offer for collusion against a common enemy, but instead he was called a warmongerer by someone whose nation wouldn't last even an hour against Ylisse's forces."

"Valm would fall to Ylisse in an hour?" Chrom asks, skeptically. "I don't think even Ada could manage that."

The corner of Basch's mouth curls, but Ada isn't so sure it's pleased.

"Not quite," Frederick says, smoothly injecting himself back in. "Valm is a collection of small nations, and the politics in the Valmese continent are unstable, not unlike Plegia and Ylisse are now... but they have more players. More crowns, more thrones, a broader breadth of experience. Their wars are bloodier. And while Ylisse has the benefit of a strong peace accord with Regna-Ferox, friendships across Valm are few and far between.” Frederick glances aside at Ada; this is for her benefit, surely. "It's been that way for centuries."

Basch nods, and he gestures across the table to Chrom, explaining.

"You must understand, Chrom, that Valm has no common banner, not like the Ylisseans, or the Plegians, or even the Feroxi," Basch says. "It is a collection of nation-states sometimes as small as a few thousand people. Every few decades, one state will rise up and subsume the others –– Archadia, in recent years, and Roseanne before it, and others time and time again. Chon'sin, for now. But war always befalls Valm again, and these states collapse."

"So why didn't my father just go to war with them?" Chrom asks. "A hundred or so little nation-states, too busy at war with each other to unify. Their militaries reliant on free companies, their peoples constantly recovering from war, their rulers constantly changing. It'd be easy."

"It _would_ be easy," Ada says, a little quietly, but Chrom looks to her, and she finds herself turning to him in her seat. "If your father wanted to build an empire, Valm would be too divided to stop him. Why didn't he take the bait?"

"Why indeed," Chrom says. His gaze drifts to Basch, perhaps too keenly aware of who he is sitting across from. "What would Ylisse even have gained from it, other than pride?"

"Trade," Ada says. "Resources, manpower. They could…"

Basch raises an eyebrow. Ada sees something here, and she feels ruminating further on how to best shatter Valm would be a grave error. But even as she pre-emptively falls quiet, Frederick clears his throat.

"Milord," Frederick says. "If we could get back to what happened…"

"Right," Chrom says. He shakes off the thought like a bitter taste, his attention returning to focus. "My father killed the ambassador just for speaking out against him?"

"Yes," Basch says. "Before my very eyes."

"Your father claimed to be bored by them," Frederick says. "He didn't kill that ambassador because the ambassador insulted him or threatened him. He killed that ambassador because he knew it would stoke the fires of war back in Valm."

"And by killing an ambassador, he'd give the nations of Valm a common hatred of Ylisse," Ada suggests. "Prompting them to unite and give Ylisse a challenge."

Basch lets out a long breath.

"Yes," Basch says. "He told us as such. When the ambassador accused him of seeking war for the mere sake of humiliating the people of Valm, the Exalt tore her from her seat and put her on her back, right on the stone of the hearth." 

"And no one stopped him?" Chrom asks. The disappointment is already there in his voice, the answer palpable, predictable.

"Even for trained soldiers, it was too fast," Basch says. "He plunged his sword through her gut and told us, even as she bled out, that the only way to best Ylisse was to unite. Before that, we should not waste our time, or we would die just as easily as she did."

Ada looks at the hearth; whether it was this room or not, she can see an echo there, a _feeling._ What it might be like to be thrown there, bones rattling off the stone. She finds herself imagining what kind of shock could keep people from reacting, keep them from standing up for their countryman. She imagines Falchion thrust through the ambassador's chest, firelight glinting off the polished blade, the Exalt's fingers wound tight around the leather-wrapped hilt. The twitch of the body, the hitch of knees. One last gasp.

It's not difficult to imagine. Just weeks ago, she'd seen Chrom plunge Falchion through a soldier's ribs like it was nothing. Ada had stepped over the body herself, rushing to block arrowshot directed at Chrom's head, a great arc of magic from her fingers. The body was nothing. No different from a stone, or a puddle.

Perhaps political intrigue _isn't_ so different from warfare.

"I'm not like him," Chrom says. "I won't be!"

Chrom stands up abruptly, as if his words alone can't bear the weight of his resolve. His fists art balled at his sides.

"Sir Ronsenberg, if it's speeches you want, or for Ylisse to pledge its armies to your kingdom's causes to make up for past crimes, I'm afraid uncertainty must keep me from any promise. But I have no interest in laying seige to Valm, none at all!"

Basch looks up at him, quiet and stern. For a moment he seems as still as stone, his eyes fixed on Chrom and one hand still wrapped around his empty tankard. Ada feels the tension grow taut enough to snap, and she watches Chrom grow immediately impatient, his chest rising and falling a little too prominantly, too quickly. 

"Any nation who seeks friendship with me will have it!" Chrom declares.

"We sat down tonight to drink as friends," Basch says. "That hasn't changed, Chrom. I merely know well enough what happens when charming young leaders driven by their passion take the seat of their nation."

"Which is?" Chrom demands.

"They aren't ready to wield the power of a nation," Basch replies. "So I implore you, young Exalt –– let reason always keep your reins."

"I have no intention of being _un_ reasonable," Chrom says. His tone slips to arguing. "We've spent a week talking, hunting, dining together, drinking together –– what have I said to make you think I want to carry on my father's legacy?"

"Lord Chrom," Frederick says, raising a hand.

"Basch," Ada interjects.

She feels all eyes turn to her. She feels Frederick's disapproval on the side of her face, but she'd sooner control this herself than watch a second longer.

"Ada," Frederick says, low on his breath.

"Chrom isn't succeeding his father," Ada says. "Chrom is succeeding Emmeryn, who managed two decades without a war, at least until the Plegian King Gangel forced her hand. Chrom has no interest in restoring Ylisse to what it was in his father's time –– a time he has no personal recollection of."

"I don't," Chrom says, empathetically.

Ada reaches to Chrom and wraps a hand around his wrist. Chrom quiets abruptly, freezing in her grip, and Ada turns her eyes back to Basch to double down:

"Ylisse had a love for warfare, that's true," she says. "I can't pretend to know much of Ylisse's history, or Plegia's, much less Valm's or any nation beyond it, but I _do_ know that Chrom's father had no allies, not even within his own halidom." (There's a little narrowing of Basch's gaze, curious, but she carries on.) "Look at us discussing him –– no one here will even speak his name, there's such shame about him. Chrom has far more respect than that."

Ada gestures at Chrom.

"Do you think this man wants Ylisse back at war as soon as possible? Before he's even consecrated as Emmeryn's successor?"

"Did this most recent short war with Plegia not start when Prince Chrom violated the peace accord?" Basch asks. "You yourself told me on the hunt the other day that you are never more comfortable than you are with a blade in your hand."

"That doesn't mean I want war," Chrom says.

"Then forgive an ageing man for being cautious," Basch replies, "but a blade is meant for precious little else."

"It's hard not to feel insulted that you think that's all I care about," Chrom retorts. "I want alliances, not war. I am giving you my alliance. Isn't that what this week is supposed to be about?" 

"I need you to understand what you are giving!" Basch replies, and here his voice picks up, a little snap to it that even has Ada tensing. Basch continues: "Alliance with Ylisse may perhaps be the most coveted thing in this world! _You can't make peace just by declaring everyone a friend!_ "

Chrom doesn't seem sure of what to say to that. Ada mulls it over, sitting forward in her seat even as Chrom sits back down, easing himself down like the strength has been sapped from his bones. Ylisse, coveted? She wonders again: trade, resources, manpower. Fruitful forests, bountiful lands, access to water, a natural line of defensive mountains, a fair climate. Years with no war, two decades to build infrastructure after tossing the old guard, the people who would resist change––

“And for what it's worth, Lord Chrom, as harsh as I may be, it isn’t my confidence you will need to win,” Basch says. “It’s that of the other ambassadors. They _fear_ Ylisse's power, particularly under an untested Exalt who has proven himself interested in war.”

"But what do they have to fear from Ylisse?" Chrom says. "Emmeryn never posed any threat to anyone. What power do I have that she didn't have in equal or greater measure?"

_None,_ Ada thinks. _But Emmeryn lacked ambition beyond Ylisse,_ she thinks. Emmeryn took Ylisse's resources as a boon, refused to weaponize them, because to weaponize them would be––

“Naga,” Ada says.

It rolls out of her mouth easily, so easily that she almost questions how deliberate it was. Chrom looks at her, confused.

"Emmeryn is my blood, the same blood –– it's no different," he says.

"Not in that sense," she says. "But a warfaring Exalt of Ylisse has a dragon at its side."

She watches Chrom's expression change.

“I represent a dragon-god,” Chrom says, rapidly. He seems more at peace just saying that, knowing, and his shoulders ease. It's an odd relief, but relief just the same. He repeats: "Naga. Ylisse has Naga."

"Aye," Basch says. He seems to breathe relief too. "Most nations have set aside their gods. Kingdoms like Ylisse, like Plegia –– they are rarities in this world. Forgive my light footsteps. I've learned to tread very carefully around people who still worship the Divine Dragons."

"I'm not a very pious man," Chrom says. "But go on."

"With your father at war with Plegia, stoking the fires of the Fell Dragon's resurrection in Plegia, Valm feared decimation," Basch says. "Our gods are long dead, long succumbed to madness and slain or sealed away. Only Naga remains now. But when your father ruled, the nations felt that Naga must have gone mad, too, for such terrible war to be waged… what could mortals hope to do in that case?"

There's a pause.

"Lord Chrom," Basch says. "I'd like you to think about what you would have done just months ago, when the Mad King Gangrel took your friend hostage. How quick would you have been to plunge Ylisse into war if Emmeryn hadn't stayed your hand? How swiftly does Ylisse place its own before the rest of the world?"

Chrom breathes deep, rolls it around in his chest. Ada watches him trouble the idea, wondering if Naga truly hadn't occured to him. Her gaze drifts to Frederick and she finds him looking exhausted, as if some wraith had sapped ten years from him in the moment she'd turned her eyes away.

She wonders, then, if Frederick feels a failure, to watch Chrom stumble like a newborn lamb. She doesn't like to admit it, but he is stumbling.

Her mind flips back over the course of the past two weeks, and it's shaped like the slope of Frederick's broad shoulders, burdened by this terrible thought. 

If Chrom isn't ready to rule, they truly stand on the precipice of the fragile peace Emmeryn had forged. 

"Naga isn't like that," Chrom says, and this is perhaps the most confident thing he has said all evening. "Naga is a protector."

"So were all the other gods," Basch says. "And perhaps you are privy to some truth, some communion that the rest of us shall never know… but I can only hope you can understand why mere mortals are wary."

"I think we have a difference of opinion in what Plegia did," Chrom says. "I just don't see it that way, Basch. Regardless of what my father did, Plegia has been an aggressor time and time again –– and I don't see why Naga should be seen as a threat when it is Plegia that worships a dragon that would devour the world if given a chance. Valm, Ylisse, Regna-Ferox, even Plegia. All of it still stands because of Naga."

Basch frowns.

Chrom seems somewhat calmed, and Ada finds herself sitting up a little straighter. Though she can see his fingers tensed and the hard line of his jaw itching to shout instead of merely speak, he keeps himself together.

"We're all here today because my ancestors, _my_ family line, locked Grima away," Chrom says. "So if you'd like to judge Ylisse's intentions by my father, there's little I can do to stop you! But you'd be wrong to. I am not like him."

"I can see," Basch says, notably not dashed against the hearth nor bleeding out on it. "Lord Chrom, if you are half the Exalt that Emmeryn was, then it's good tidings for the peoples of this world."

This time, Emmeryn's name seems to halt Chrom, even if it had been spoken several times already. This time, the gauntlet has been thrown down –– not just an inkling or an idea, but someone putting it to words.

_Be_ Emmeryn.

Chrom nods.

"Well," Chrom says. "I'll live up to that."

There's another pause, and Chrom rises again. Frederick and Basch both rise, too, and Ada stays firmly seated, looking up at Chrom.

"I'm going to turn in for the night," he says. "Thank you for your counsel."

And he walks out without another word.

 

—⚜—

 

 

Part of her itches to go after him. Indeed, part of her feels it's her duty now, to rise when he rises, to run after him down the hall and slip her hand in his and tell him it's fine. Listen to him rage or quarrel or vent, stroke his hair, comfort him.

But she doesn't. She's not sure if Frederick or Basch think much of her staying or going, but suddenly it seems necessary to stay, to wrap things up. After all, hadn't Basch approached her at dinner the moment Chrom had left, to catch her off-guard and ask about her place in this?

It seems imperative that she resolve things.

"I'll walk you back, Ada," Frederick says. "Captain; thank you for your company and your counsel. I know Chrom appreciates your commitment to peace… and I am sure in the morning, when everyone is well rested, we can resume this discussion in council."

"Of course," Basch says. "I'm glad we could speak frankly."

"I as well," Frederick replies. He bows very curtly and moves to the door, opening it before glancing back. "Ada?"

Ada rises, but she stays where she is, fingertips finding the edge of the table.

"Go ahead," Ada says to Frederick. "I'd like to speak with Basch another moment."

For a moment, Frederick just watches her, appraising her as he so often does. She thinks he might object, so close on the heels of their quarrel, particularly when he stills the door and lets his gaze drift to Basch.

"Don't be up too late," he says, finally. "You'll be expected at court tomorrow morning."

Ada nods. Her heart pangs, but she nods.

"I shan't be long," she says.

Frederick leaves.

For a moment, there's quiet still. Basch looks a little tired, the lines of his old face seeming deeper still than Frederick's.

"Shall we sit?" he asks.

"We won't be long," she says.

He sits anyway.

"Hmm," he rumbles. He even smiles, though it is one that only reaches the crinkling lines around his eyes. "Right to the point! My Queen is not unlike you, you know, in some ways. She doesn't have much patience for people who come in and tell her hard truths, but she knows they are the people she can trust most as allies."

"A fair observation," Ada says. "Did Chrom tell you I do that?"

"I did, considering the way Chrom talks about you," Basch says. "The man is positively overwhelmed by his affections for you. And your prowess on the battlefield? I don't think I've ever heard such wild stories. Toppling the Khans at their own game? Fending off an assassination attempt on the Exalt? Pushing your armies forward with the Exalt already lost? Few people could boast of that in a lifetime, let alone a year."

"I don't boast at all," Ada replies. 

Basch chuckles. 

"No, I suppose not," he says. "You're rather quiet about yourself."

She lets the silence linger for a moment, mulling over the boundaries that have been laid out, the conflict with Frederick, the legacies left to Ylisse, the things she knows nothing about. She doesn't know where she fits into any of it.

All she knows is that this is Chrom's time.

"I want you to know something about Chrom," Ada says.

"I'm listening," he says.

"He's probably the kindest person I've ever met," Ada says. "When he found me, he didn't just lift me on my feet –– he gave me friendship, and a place to stay. He opened his family to me and is now making a home for me here. I haven't met as many kings or queens or exalts as you, but I don't think a single one of them has done something so kind for a complete stranger."

"I have been impressed by his kindness this week," Basch says. He shifts in his chair, comfortably, an ankle over the other knee. "And you are correct. There are very few kings or queens who would do such a thing for a stranger, much less take them as a wife."

"Right," Ada says. "But it's not just me. That kindness extends to anyone who gives him a chance. Did you know, at the foot of Plegia Castle, he convinced a Plegian woman to turn against her people and help him save Emmeryn? Even in the midst of all that chaos, even when she told him she could backstab him –– he chose to trust her."

"I did not know."

"Now you do," Ada says. "And did you hear about Nowi? That little manakete was being held by slavers. Chrom could have left her in just anyone's hands, but he didn't. He decided she could come with us."

Basch nods.

"This is the man I am going to marry, who I am going to support in his rule," Ada says. "I have never once heard him talk about invading another nation. He has never expressed interest in empire. He would sooner drink with you or take you out to hunt a stag than contemplate, for even a moment, taking your nation from you."

Ada folds her arms, leaning a hip against the table's edge.

"Now, Chrom is a skilled warrior. He's a natural on the battlefield, and he knows that it is what he was born to do. I won't deny that. But I promise you –– if Ylisse goes to war again, it'll only be in defense of our own. And with Ferox by our side and Plegia deep in reparations, we have _no one_ launching attacks against us."

Basch seems to have a lot to say to that, but he remains in silence, watching her. A gaze like that could feel penetrating, but Ada doesn't wear her heart on her sleeve like Chrom does, and she knows that there is a thick obscuring mist just under the surface of her skin that not just anyone can see through.

"Together, then," Basch says, finally. "You plan to rule at his side? You didn't seem so sure the other night."

"It's Chrom's halidom," Ada says. "His birthright, his legacy. Not mine. I'm happy to defend him, but I'm not sure why you take such consideration for my place in this."

"Because Chrom can rattle off your favourite books and how picky you are in the mornings and how delightful your temper is and how you like your hair," Basch says. "But for everything I've been told about you, not once has anyone said where you hail from."

"Does it _matter?_ "

"At first I thought you were Plegian," Basch continues. "I have no doubt that Ylisse would loathe to admit its son had chosen a bride from Plegia."

"Clearly you think differently now," Ada replies. "Again, Basch –– does it matter?"

"A tactical prodigy arrives seemingly from nowhere, and suddenly two decades of peace is overturned, leaving the great nations of Plegia, Ylisse and Regna-Ferox all under new rule?" Basch replies. "I'd say that matters."

Ada shrugs. There isn't really else she can do; as desperately as she wishes she knew the answer, nothing comes to her. She can't be certain of anything beyond how she looks in a mirror, and even then, the marks on her body feel like they belong to something unknown, something looming over her shoulder.

For all the things she has answers for, this isn't one of them. 

For the first time, she sorely wishes Frederick were in the room, offering some relaxed direction to the conversation. He could steer it away from this question, or point her towards the diplomatic answer.

But he isn't here.

"Who are you, really?" Basch asks.

"I don't know," she says, finally.

Basch nods, surprisingly accepting, but he doesn't inquire further. Perhaps he senses her discomfort, or at least the discomfort she's willing to lay out for him. Perhaps he just knows better, or sees no point.

"Well, Ada," he says. "I hope you have answers someday. And I look forward to many years of friendship."

"I look forward to it too," she says.

He extends a hand, palm up.

Ada places her right hand in his. The Mark of Grima is dull in poor light of the dying fire. It's the colour of a bruise, but the edges sharp and crisp, unnaturally so. For a beat, Basch looks at her hand in his, but he says nothing. 

But when he bends to kiss her knuckles, it lacks an ease.

 

—⚜—

 

The castle is quiet, eerily so. Ada takes the path from salon to Chrom's quarters –– or their quarters –– alone, the corridors largely extinguished for the night, the servants long dismissed to their beds. Winter's chill seems to reach the castle all the more with the hustle and bustle of daytime gone, and now every wall and every stone feels more like a cellar than a grand castle.

Her sleek dress does little to protect her from the cold, either, and without trousers, even the skin of her inner thighs feels a little cool. The sleeves do little to protect her either; despite the volume of them, they're far too breezy and open to trap any warmth. 

When the stairs to Chrom's quarters come into view, all of the torches are still lit, waiting for her. The path is blocked, however; Frederick sits at the foot of them, elbows on his knees. Even haloed by the warm firelight, he looks exhausted. 

It's that look from before, the one he'd worn on the balcony, and just like before, it vanishes into that veneer of professionalism when he hears her footsteps and looks up.

"You must be exhausted," Ada says. "Why don't you go rest, Frederick? We can talk in the morning."

He rises to his feet. He looks like he has questions, but he pares them down just as quickly in favour of giving her a short, curt bow.

"That may be, but I wanted to apologize for taking that tone with you earlier," he says. "It didn't serve you well and it was unbecoming of me."

"I've already forgiven you, but the apology is appreciated," Ada says. "I had a lot of that coming, and I think it's given me a fair bit of sorely needed perspective."

"I as well," Frederick says. "I gave what you said a lot of thought, about you and I having dedicated ourselves to Chrom. We are in this together, and I should have accepted that well before this point."

Ada nods.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

But Frederick doesn't turn to go just yet. Something strikes Ada, and she asks:

"Would you say Ylisse is the most powerful nation in the world?" Ada asks. She feels silly needing to ask, ignorant of the greater workings of this world, but there is only so much one can learn in a year. After tonight, she feels particularly thin on the truth.

"Perhaps," Frederick says. The sole of his boot scuffs the stone when he turns, his chin rising just a touch. "But power has changed often, Ada."

Ada rolls an ugly question around in her mouth, and she knows Frederick is waiting for it, waiting for her to point out what surely must be on his mind, too.

"Chrom doesn't know much about politics," Ada says. "He seemed surprised to hear that people would have questions for him and his allegiance, his trade, his support. I can't pretend to know much either, but…"

"Lord Chrom wasn't raised to rule, Ada," Frederick reminds her, and it's a touch gentler than usual, even soft. "It will take him time to catch up."

"But what I gathered from that…" Ada trails.

Frederick shakes his head.

"You gathered why it is imperative that we encourage him," Frederick says. "In the best of ways, not just for his sake, not just to strengthen Ylisse, but also to protect this world. You and Chrom together…"

Frederick trails. Ada takes her turn for silence; perhaps neither of them really want to have this conversation. Both of them are tired, and it's been a long day, and Ada is sure it's just as apparent in the knit of her eyebrows as it is on his face. The two of them lingering there in nice clothes and beer in their bellies and the future of the world on their shoulders. The most powerful nation in the world, under Chrom's rule –– Ada has never thought of him as so young before.

"Chrom and I together," she says. Basch's words meander around in her head, and somehow they fall harsher in her memory than they did at the time. "All those arguments you and I have had, about whether I'm really a threat to Chrom. Was it because I was an outsider or because of my battle tactics?" 

Perhaps he didn't expect this to come up again, but Frederick exhales, long and deep. He looks away for a moment, perhaps to collect himself, and then he says:

"It started the former," he says. "It ended up the latter."

Ada nods.

"We don't have to talk about it right now, if you don't want to," Ada says.

"It's fine. Did Basch say something?"

Ada nods again.

"For what it's worth, Ada, I think those tactics are marvelous," Frederick says. "I've never met anyone with such an aptitude for stategy. You consider every element, every potential; I never thought the Shepherds would ever be more than some passtime of Chrom's. I never… gods, Ada. I can only wonder who you were before this, that you have such skill."

This is perhaps the highest compliment Ada has ever heard from Frederick's mouth, and Ada lets herself savour it for a moment. It's a rare thing, she's sure.

"Thank you," she says. "It means a lot, Frederick. It truly does."

"But?" he says.

She finds herself smiling a little at that, and to her surprise, the corners of his mouth twitch up, too. Ada hikes up her dress a few inches so she can move up the stairs and sit down.

"Lay it on me," she says. "Might as well. Come on. We've said basically everything else today; what's more lost sleep?"

Frederick looks down at her with that odd smile, and then he shakes his head and sits down too.

"You're a glutton for punishment," he says. "But as you wish. I have some concerns about how quickly he has come to rely on you."

It is odd. Ada knows it is; the idea that someone would take her in so immediately and so wholly as Chrom has still feels unbelieveable at times. _None of this_ , she thinks sometimes, _makes sense_. Disbelief is an easy feeling to reach for, at least until Chrom takes her hand instead, and he does take it, _every_ time. It is overwhelming to think that someone like him exists, and that he might love her, of all people. Her –– a stranger not only to him, but to everyone. To everything.

"Now, you and Chrom together... you must admit, Ada, you do enable each other. He would permit you anything, and when you come up with one of your brilliant ideas, he takes it before all other advice, and you carry out his will without hesitation. There's nothing inherently wrong with dedication, Ada… until the two of you are in a position of power where it might send people to their deaths for your cause, or kill others for your enemy's."

"Chrom's sense of justice has often been outweighed his ability to do something about it," Frederick says. "War will be easy for him because he now has that power, but at the very least I know Chrom understands what war means to his people. There is a reason I have encouraged him to adventure around the countryside, you know. Even if his favourite part is when he gets to be a hero and dash some brigand with his sword, it has been important to acquaint him with common folk, with the contours of his halidom. I spent a lot of time in villages as a child, too, courtesy of my father, and I'm grateful for it. I feel doing the same for Chrom has imbued in him a compassion for the most vulnerable people in Ylisse."

Frederick sighs shortly. 

"But war will be easy for you because you have no connection to these nations, to their peoples or politics. You are kind, but you are disinterested, Ada. They are little to you, not for any sense of cruelty, but merely because you have such little experience in the world."

His smile has vanished. Hers feels frozen on her face.

"I know you hold a love for justice in your heart, and goodness, and all those things," he says. "But you can be very callous. And you... well, this is not to say you think little of people. You clearly think the world of him, and have found fast friends here. But I think you are a brilliant tactician, at least in part, because you are naïve to this world."

"Naïve?" she repeats.

She's never even imagined having that word applied to her, amnesia or not.

He watches for some reaction. Ada isn't sure what to say, or even what to think of this assessment, and so she just lets the silence fester. But Frederick seems to see something on her face, and to her surprise, he reaches over for her hand and clasps it between both of his. She feels the hard bump of her engagement ring, marking her place here. Something concerned flits across Frederick's face.

"I don't mean to tread upon your feelings," Frederick says, "butshould you never regain your memories, Ada… in case you never know where you came from, and know some connection beyond your new home here…"

He trails for a moment, rolls a thought around in his mouth, and then says:

"You must throw yourself into making a place here. You _must_ put that brilliant mind of yours into knowing people. Not books, or great battles, or terrain, or different styles of swordsmanship. You must understand _people_. Their cultures, their creeds. It's the most important thing you could do, if you want to help Chrom. Do you understand?" 

"I do," she says. She places her other hand overtop his. "I'm going to take that to heart."

"Good," Frederick says, and a little relief slips into his voice. "I have every confidence you can be a good wife to him, and a good consort to Ylisse."

There's not much more to say between them after that, though. The gravitas of it all suddenly feels silly to her, especially seeing the look on Frederick's face, and that silliness feels infinitely preferable. And so another question bubbles out of her: "Frederick, do you get sentimental when you drink?"

Frederick scoffs immediately, withdrawing his hands from hers and rising to his feet.

"Milady, please!" he protests. He ushers her, reaching for her hand immediately again to help her up. "Come now, I think it's time for bed."

"You _are_ ," Ada says, cracking a smile as he helps her to her feet, her other hand lifting the hem of her skirts so she doesn't trip. 

"It's bedtime," he repeats, and he ushers her once more, waving her up the stairs. "Go! Go. I shall see you in the morning."

"Don't you want to hear what nice things I have to say about you?" she asks.

"That's quite enough bonding for one day, I'd say!" he says. "Go on, as I won't be carrying you to bed as I did Lissa."

And then he scoots her up the stairs.

 

 

 

 

.


	8. Rings

.

 

 

Ada wakes to her face buried in Chrom's armpit.

They're a tangled mess in general. He's under the covers and she isn't, but even so she's curled up in the crook of his side, his arm around her and her arms around his. Who trapped who first, she isn't sure, but she's still wearing her dress from the night before, and it creates a confusing physical state where she is both warmed by the furnace of a man underneath her and cooled by the chilly castle air plaguing the rest of the room. The moment she's awake, she's too cold to just lay there, and extracting herself takes a few ginger pries of his fingers and a few more wiggles as to not disturb him.

When she straightens up, her midsection hurts. She tells herself to never, ever fall asleep in a tightly laced bodice ever again. She also thinks it odd to wake up so naturally, undisturbed by Frederick, but judging by the sky and her mild headache, it's a little early for any of them to be up, anyway.

Still. She's upright now, and she's not crawling into bed again until she's sans bodice.

She undresses as steathily as she can, fumbling with lacings up her own back and too-tight underarm seams. It takes a few minutes, and all the wriggling around chases away any chance of dozing back off, but once she has tossed the dress over the top of the dressing screen so it doesn't wrinkle she creeps right back into bed, this time under the covers.

Chrom grumbles something sleepily, but when she scoots into his reach, he all-too easily ensnares her again. Ada finds herself hauled against his chest by those broad arms of his, and his body heat makes her feel immediately toasty warm. She decides being cocooned by him is the most divine thing on earth. She could sleep there forever, feeling his knees on the backs of hers, the warmth of his chest against her back. And, as she realizes to some amusement, his cock makes a firm stripe between her cheeks, apparent even through his linen pants.

Ada sighs happily, and she feels it ripple through him, in the rise of his chest, in the ever-so-slight tightening of his grip.

"You came to bed late," he murmurs in her ear, so relaxed he may as well still be sleeping. She feels as though the fine hairs at the nape of her neck must rise up for him every time his voice slips into that sleepy rumble. He squeezes her.

"You didn't wait up for me," she says. She presses a lazy kiss to his wrist. Gods, those arms of his. She wants to rub her cheeks on them sometimes, just because she can.

"I was done talking," he says. "Sorry."

"So don't talk," she says. The smile must reach her voice, because he chuckles under his breath and he shifts his embrace on her so he can let one hand travel up and down her front. Her toes curl, the bottoms of her feet bumping the tops of his.

"Your feet are freezing," he scolds her. His hands rove, squeezing here, kneading there. " _Most_ of you is freezing."

"What about my quim?" she asks.

She lifts a leg, hooking it around him so he doesn't have to contend with her closed thighs. He follows the expanse of her ribs, her abdomen, the bowl of her pelvis, until his palm slips right into the space she's made for him, and when he grabs her there, he murmurs, chuckling as if he can't believe what he's going to say: "No, that's very warm."

(Chrom's vocal cords have yet to get as comfortable with her most sensitive parts the same way his hands and mouth have.)

Two fingers find her slit, and he rubs a firm circle over the pliable flesh of her mons. While his cock presses at her back more and more insistently, his fingers are slow, exploratory, as if this isn't well-traveled land for him. She feels mildly impatient, a little ache that wants all of him, at all times, and will never get enough of him. His fingers are so good –– the best, she thinks –– and even if she has a headache from drink, even if she is tired, even if she is cold, she wants to feel him just like this and more. 

"Tell me what to do," he says. 

"You already know," she says, mid-way to a gasp. She reaches behind her to rake her fingers through his hair, clutch his head to hers. She didn't know it was possible to want something she already has, not to this degree.

"So," he murmurs, breathy, and then his lips drag around the shell of her ear, like he can't resist. "I want you to order it."

"Come in me," she breathes. She presses back against him by arching her back. "Don't stop until you do."

He makes his noise, this moan, and he grips her thigh so tightly his fingers must leave indents, and she's so wet that he slides into her in one long, firm stroke. A sigh slips from her lips, as if he could push all the air from her lungs with just a thrust. 

"Harder," she bids him.

He presses into her so hard she rolls to her stomach, and he with her.

And when they're finished and she's sparkling head to toe and he's flushed all over, he slumps against her, breathing harder than usual. For a heady moment she can only rake her fingers through his hair and work herself against him slower and slower, but then she feels him inhale sharply.

"Chrom," she murmurs, kissing along his jaw over and over again. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he says. She's sure she feels him trembling, and she's not convinced it's anything to do with any afterglow.  "Yeah. I'm okay. Thank you. Thank you."

 

—⚜—

 

Frederick arrives when they've both settled back into snuggling, and the moment they hear the knock at the door, they're both sliding out of bed at speed to put on the minimum amount of acceptable clothes –– which is considerably more for Chrom, which strikes Ada as funny, considering how mad it is for someone with that physique to be that shy, especially around someone he's knowna as long as Frederick.

But the moment Frederick is in and has dispensed with his morning hellos, he first thing he does is pull the dress down off the screen. He inspects it so swiftly that Ada assumes he must actually know some sort of divining magic. She's rather glad for his distraction; it gives Chrom a moment to slink around in the background and pull himself together.

"You slept in this, didn't you?"

"Guilty and uncivilized," she says, a little wryly. 

Frederick just shakes his head, tut-tutting. He hands off the dress to the waiting arms of a maid, who scurries off down the hall.

"That can't have been very comfortable to sleep in," Frederick remarks. He looks her up and down, as if he might see evidences of wrinkles on her, too, and she just folds her arms across her midsection.

"It wasn't any worse than sleeping on the ground," Ada says. "I'm sorry about the ironing that'll need to be done."

"Well, I'll take your acknowledgement of that as a victory," Frederick says. He pauses. "One of the many hurdles we'll face civilizing you, hmm?"

Ada smirks and moves off, grabbing her trousers from the lounger and a shirt from the wardrobe. Frederick just shakes his head. Ada likes this reaction. The more she thinks about it, the more she likes the idea of giving him a little space to tease her, even if it feels a little vulnerable. Perhaps if she gives in that much, they can just scrap here or there like normal people, no hard feelings.

She not sure how fond he'd be of that idea, though. If he wants to continue throwing his ego on the pyre of nobility and class and duty all the time, she supposes that's his prerogative, but she'd really hopes he'll just argue with her. Keep her on her toes more.

"This is the best I've ever seen you two get along off the battlefield," Chrom remarks. "I guess you should just fight more often."

"I have no desire to fight with your lady, as she won't take pity on me as you will," Frederick says. "You, however, I will make an exception for any day. Start getting dressed, milord."

_Some spars those are,_ Ada thinks, having seen Frederick effortless floor Chrom in wrestling or with wooden blades in a sparring match, but Frederick has scarcely even raised his voice in an argument. She wonders if he saves it solely for when no one else is around; she can imagine why. She backed right out of the only argument she ever got into with Chrom, and she has no desire to see what it's like beyond that.

Still, Chrom gets up and slinks off to comb his hair and rinse his mouth out with mint wine. Frederick watches him go and then sighs. Ada glances at Chrom's retreating back. Frederick notices, too.

"I've heard this morning your rooms are almost ready," he says. "I thought you should know that your new wardrobe in the solar is being filled to the brim with the finest, fanciest trousers an Exalt's consort could desire."

"I'll try not to cover them in grass stains and ink spills."

"Milady, if I can maintain _any_ say in your wardrobe, then you will never, ever wear white riding pants _ever_ again for that very reason," he says. "There is plenty of black in your future."

Milady. She tells herself to not just tolerate it, but to accept it. _Milady_. 

"Oh, good," she says. "I like black."

"I'd noticed," Frederick says.

She smirks and slips off to dress. Behind the screen she wiggles into fitted trousers she thinks were still made for looks rather than practicality, but she'll take it. The blouse is looser, longer sleeved. She listens to Frederick move around the room, dragging around the covers of their bed and picking up Chrom's clothes from where he'd discarded them on the floor the night before. She hears Chrom emerge again, and she has the distinct pleasure of watching him trail his fingers against the screen as he passes her by, as if he could touch her shadow.

"Your briefing for today, milord," Frederick says.

Ada listens to them go over it, Chrom largely silent, Frederick prattling on about the day. She has generally listened to these morning rituals, but this time –– for the first time –– they are somewhat relevant to her. She'll be trailing Chrom and Frederick around today, at the very least. Going to court. 

By time she emerges from the screen to brush her hair, Chrom still hasn't budged to begin any actual dressing. He's just sitting on the end of the bed listening to Frederick talk, nodding here or there, giving his mm-hmms. Ada has never known Chrom to play out any reluctance, but just as she is contemplating being more agreeable to Frederick, she wonders if he is trying to be more agreeable about politics. It'd make sense, after last night.

Odd to see him so hesitant, though.

Frederick certainly notices too, and when he finishes his bit, he lowers his papers and looks at Chrom frankly.

"You're subdued this morning, milord," he says.

Chrom shrugs, as if he could be subdued even about the suggestion that he is subdued. Frederick waits, ever-patient. 

"Can I speak with the two of you for a moment?" Chrom asks, finally.

Both Ada and Frederick look to him. Ada thinks he looks so boyish, sitting on the end of the bed in his pajamas and slippers, his hair already bouncing back into its usual tousle, his eyes wide and downtrodden. With their eyes on him, he doesn't seem to know what to say at first, and so he just lets loose a terrible sigh. Ada sits at his side. It seems right.

"When you're ready, milord," Frederick says.

"That's the problem," Chrom says. "I don't think I am."

They're all silent. After a good long look, Frederick sits on the end of the lounger, eyebrows knitted.

"What do you plan to do, then?"

Chrom shakes his head.

"Obviously I can't abdicate," he says. "Lissa is even less equipped than I am, and regretfully, there is no one else."

Frederick nods.

"I know I have the mettle for it, I know I have the strength, but what I don't have is…" Chrom shakes his head. "Oh, I'm loathe to admit this, but Frederick, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. All I can do is foreswear the title until I can wear it without feeling like I haven't earned it."

"So you'll remain Crown Prince until you want to take the title?" Frederick asks.

"Yes," Chrom says. He pauses. "I can do that, can't I?"

"You're the Exalt, sire. If that's what you want to do, you can command it," Frederick says.

Ada wonders if it matters beyond the good it would do for Chrom's state of mind. Not that it isn't well reason enough, but it strikes her as the most ludicrously courtlike thing she's encountered thus far –– a man acting as sovereign while not formally being called sovereign simply because he hasn't accepted a title. Was she not a tactician before she was granted a title amongst the Shepherds? Has Chrom not been her partner since before he put a ring on her finger, or before he asked her to marry him? Ada worries the engagement ring with her thumb, and then Chrom absently reaches for her hand, closing it around hers. She meets his eyes.

"And," he says, "when I'm ready, you're going to be next to me. We do this together."

"I'll be ready too, then," Ada says.

"Good," Chrom says. "Nothing like that conversation with Basch can ever happen again."

Frederick looks over them both and nods smoothly.

"We have our work cut out for us, then."

 

—⚜—

 

When Chrom is finally dressed, Frederick takes them both downstairs, first to breakfast –– a quiet affair with a handful of the diplomats. Sir Ronsenberg is absent, his chair empty, but the lot that does show up are a relaxed few, clearly saving their throats for a long day of meetings and court. For the most part, Chrom is quiet too, though with a little coaxing he is at least pulled into a friendly conversation with Tulip, the dark-haired strategist from Jesca, about bowmanship and the finer challenges of hunting in the summertime.

After breakfast, everyone heads to the throne room, the thrum of conversation hardly even flickering. Ada has been in the throne room before, but never during court, and it's odd to see the space filled with so many people. They file into the session and into the U-shaped rows of chairs. Ada wonders where they will sit, but Frederick pulls her aside.

"You come with me," Frederick says, beckoning her to follow. He gestures up towards the ceiling, but more specifically to the balconies lining the top of the courtroom. "You're going to observe from there. I'll stay with you this morning, but I'll be joining Chrom downstairs thereafter."

"I'm just to observe?"

"For now," he says. "I suspect you still be set up in some task or another before long, but for now, you observe."

He looks at her, as if waiting for a complaint, but she swallows her thoughts and nods. He leads her up a winding set of stairs that exits out into a balcony with long benches. There are a few others scattered amongst the whole length, most with pens and parchment. Newspeople, Ada guesses. They all pay rapt attention to the goings-on downstairs.

Ada leans against the balcony with Frederick, not willing to just sit back in the benches.

"So everyone here is integral what Ylisse does politically?" she asks. "These are the important people to know?"

"Yes. All vassals of the Exalt are subject to the decisions made for the realm, so they all enjoy the right to sit at court and at times vote on certain concerns. However, the poorer nobles can ill afford to spend much of their weeks at court, so it is the wealthier of the nobility who attend regularly. It's best to get to know them."

"I see," Ada says. "And those who do not hold land?"

"Their lords and ladies represent them at court," Frederick says. "They enjoy no individual privileges. And the truth is, of course, even the votes of wealthy vassals are worthless without the Exalt's consent."

Ada nods. The call is made that court is in session.

"When Lord Chrom announces his plans for the title, a college of judges will likely be established to aid in his rule," Frederick says. "Many of the vassals serve as judges now and again as needed, but these will be somewhat permanent."

"Are you concerned that they will grow accustomed to authority and refuse to relinquish it later?" Ada asks.

Frederick pauses, and he looks back at her. There's something in his gaze there, something mildly vindicated, and then he turns his gaze back over the court. Ada looks too, watching the lords and ladies of the court speak at such volume over each other that Chrom seems lost. Sat in his massive chair with his hands on both armrests, he even seems worried that their voices might blow him right off his seat.

"You'll get the hang of this quickly," Frederick says, finally. "He'll be slower, regretfully. The same way you lack his talent with the sword, he lacks your talent with your tongue."

Ada purses her lips to hold back a smile, and then replies: "Reining in his temper may prove to be the hardest thing of all."

Basch is speaking; Ada's not sure when he slipped in, but his voice booms over the crowd, and yet the crowd is so loud Ada still can't make sense of what he is saying, at least not with the echo in the balconies. She watches Chrom sit forward –– he opens his mouth to shout back, but he says nothing.

"Is he any better when you're downstairs with him?" Ada asks.

"No," Frederick says. "But he'll learn to control the floor. It took Emmeryn time, too. She never cried, but you could tell she might have felt some impulse to, when she was small. It takes a great bit of fortitude. I dare say I wouldn't possess it myself."

(Ada isn't so sure of that.)

"Is he more reserved today than he was before?" Ada asks.

"Did Basch's words strike him deeply, you're wondering?" Frederick asks in turn. It's a little wry. "I think he was thoroughly spooked."

"I thought so."

"Loathe as I may be to see milord unhappy, it's not necessarily a bad thing, once in a while," Frederick remarks. "It's like learning swordsmanship, or footwork, or horsemanship. You take bruises but you learn."

"Too true," she muses. "As long as he doesn't get demoralized."

"Well, such is the office of his fiancée, then," Frederick says. "Keep him in good spirits."

Ada chuckles. Frederick says nothing, his eyes once more settled below. Ada listens to the going-ons a little bit longer, watching the players move around as passion takes them up. Tulip gives a short speech on trade routes blocked by Plegian interference. Cerys of Molia delivers a harsh condemnation of Ylissean isolation, the dangers of not maintaining allies.

When these speeches grow too specific and begin floating above her head and she feels as ill-prepared as Chrom must, she lets her attention drift aside, and her eyes turn to Frederick. He's still playing close attention, as studiously as if it were a battlefield below them. He stands so close to the balcony that the toes of his boots brush the stone, and his hands rest on the railing, spread wide. 

Ada thinks of Frederick doing this at their balcony, just a day before.

"Frederick?" she inquires.

"Yes, milady?" 

His attention scarcely turns, his pose fixed.

"What were you thinking yesterday, when I called to you on the balcony?"

This draws his gaze, at least. For a moment Ada feels pierced, his attention fixed on her so solely that everything downstairs seems to fade away, even for her.

"I wondered what she was thinking, standing on the edge like that," he says. "How brave she was, to look down and see the world stretched out below her, all of it determined to go on without her, should she just tip over the edge. Did she think she had done enough? That from that point, only her memory would be able to protect her brother and sister? Her nation?"

Ada stands up and moves closer to him; she dares even shift slightly into his space, where one of his outspread hands are. He glances at her as if she has encroached upon some sacred space, but instead he reaches to put a hand on her shoulder. He gives her firm squeeze.

"I wondered… if she thought Chrom was ready. If she knew what she was leaving him to. I thought from my last conversation with her that perhaps she did, but..."

"I didn't know her very well," Ada says. "But I'd like to think she did, too, and that she had faith in him."

Frederick nods. He squeezes her shoulder again.

"Thank you, Ada," he says.

And then he turns his attention back to the crowd below.

 

—⚜—

 

Court breaks for lunch come early afternoon. Chrom has some errands to attend to over his lunch, which Frederick informs her that he'll be attending to without her, but in his place there is Lissa, who wants to spend time together. Ada agrees, even though she's not terribly hungry after that breakfast, and when Frederick goes off to rejoin with Chrom, Ada waits in the balconies, listening to the last dying conversations of lingering people.

Ada thinks that peacetime is perhaps not going to be so different from war –– not in so many ways, anyway.

"Ada!"

Lissa appears at the top of the stairs, back to her usual bustling self, apparently having slept off the previous night. She has her front of her bluebell-coloured dress fisted in her hands, and still her hoopskirt wobbles precariously close to tripping her up on the stairs.

"Sleep well?" Ada asks.

"Ha ha," Lissa replies, and she plunks down in a seat, the hoopskirt collapsing almost entirely. "But it was nice! Frederick keeps threatening that I'm too old to get carried to bed but hah, he'll be tucking me in when I'm forty!"

Ada snorts. It seems mad to her –– she can't imagine wanting to be tucked in as an adult –– but she can also imagine that Frederick enjoys being able to dote on her, so if that's what they do, it's no business of hers. Ada shifts in her seat, leaning her cheek on her hand.

"He's so good to you," Ada says.

"The best," Lissa agrees. "But hey! I'm going to the columbarium today; Frederick says it'll be all ready for Emm soon, so I wanted to say hi to Mum before it's crowded all day every day for a while… want to come?"

"If you want company, I suppose," Ada says.

"Have you ever seen the columbarium?" she asks.

Ada shakes her head. In all the tours Frederick has given her, the columbarium has never been included, and Chrom avoids most conversation about his parents. Who would she be to give up a chance to explore any uncharted inch of the castle, particularly one that houses history of such importance?

Besides, she thinks. It's the closest she'll be to the other parts of her ring, she might as well see.

"You should see it," Lissa says.

Ada casts one last look down at the throne room floor, which has largely emptied out. Chrom is sitting on the throne, elbows on his knees, and Frederick sits on the steps in front of it, and they're talking quietly. As Ada looks down, both Chrom looks up and meets her gaze, almost as if she'd called his name. For a second they hold that gaze, even across floors, and she sees his mouth curve into a smile. Despite Frederick now watching, Ada touches a finger to her lips –– about the subtlest way to express it she can think of, and she watches Chrom blush and laugh before he does the same in return.

"C'mon!" Lissa says. "Quit the moony eyes, let's go! I swear!"

"Oh please," Ada says, withdrawing from the balcony. "You'll know exactly what this feels like someday."

"I'm never getting married!" Lissa announces.

But off they go.

 

—⚜—

 

The columbarium is a good bit across the grounds, a pale stone building near indistinguishable from the other pale stone buildings flanking it. There's a fleet of servants shoveling the walkways, metal spades scraping the stone, and they scatter as Ada and Lissa approach. Lissa huddles against Ada's arm, the two of them bundled in fur shawls and stepping lightly over the slippery stone.

"You come here often, then?" Ada asks.

"Mmhmm," Lissa hums, and she is first to grab the door, but instead of pulling it open, she just slides on the soles of her boots towards the door. Ada reaches in to help, and together they haul the big old door open and scoot in. "I always have! I don't remember Mum at all, not even a little bit, but just being able to visit is nice."

"It's nice that you can have that," Ada says. "I'm sure you've heard lots of stories about her, too."

Lissa shakes her head.

"Not really," Lissa says. She shrugs, and her voice grows a little sheepish: "Nobody talks about her much beyond how sad it was that she died, but that's okay. Sometimes the fantasy of it is better than the reality."

Ada nods.

Inside, the columbarium looks larger than it had from the outside. The vaulted ceilings stretch well overhead, the white marble well-polished and almost as cool as the air outside. Their footsteps don't echo, to Ada's mild surprise, as the sound sinks into all the little caches and niches full of urns, the rows stretching all those stories up. Each urn is a person, she thinks. A person who shares Lissa's bloodline, and Chrom's, and Emmeryn's, stretching back for hundreds of years, maybe a millenia. Ada is doing mental math for generations for a moment before she realizes she can't account for siblings and cousins and marriages, and so she gives up.

All of this, however, narrowed down to two people, a young man and a young woman. Chrom and Lissa bear the weight of this entire family line, and Ada has an odd little thought that its future now rests on her shoulders, too. A future borne by only three people –– four, once Lissa starts courting someone. 

It seems precarious, perilously so, but almost all tables are most stable on four legs, aren't they?

"Look," Lissa says, taking her right to the end. "Every time someone dies, they move everyone else up so make room at the bottom. So all the way up there are great-times-a-million grandparents, looking down on their descendants. Kinda neat, huh?"

"It is. Do people forget the names of the people at the top, when they can't read the names anymore?" Ada asks.

"Probably," Lissa says. "Just the legendary ones remain, I guess. Like the Hero-King and his wife."

It helps that a statue of Marth stands in the middle of the great columbarium, too. He stands at least ten feet tall, his burnished face turned towards the skylight and his Falchion held aloft. It doesn't look quite like Chrom's does. His short sleeves reveal well-muscled arms, and the great romantic folds of his cape fan out to his boots as fluidly as if they were real cloth caught on the wind. He expression looks a little battle-hardened, even a little grizzled. The Fire Emblem mounted on his arms is set with gems –– real gems, but not _real_ gems.

Lissa follows Ada's gaze to it.

"Every time I look at that guy, I try to guess what he really looked like," Lissa says. "I mean, they can't have known! Frederick says that statue isn't much older than he is! So only about a hundred." 

Ada snorts.

"He loves that joke."

"I can imagine."

Lissa turns back to the lowest niches, and so Ada does as well. There are dozen there, all empty, but someone has already installed a plaque in a center one with Emmeryn's name. Ada wonders, unwittingly, if anything ever will sit there. An empty urn, maybe. She looks up –– there's no telling how many of the urns are empty, bodies never recovered.

She thinks she understands why Chrom doesn't come here.

"This is Mum," Lissa says, going right up to a niche. It's recently been moved upward, and Lissa has to reach on her tiptoes to even come close to kissing the mantle. "Hi Mum, this is Ada. Ada is going to be my sister-in-law, soon! The first wedding in the castle since yours, right? It's going to have to be a big one!"

Ada isn't sure what to say, and she's not entirely certain about speaking to an urn that almost certainly won't speak back, so she just smiles and waves and steps back to give Lissa her space. Lissa laughs –– "I _know_ it's weird!" –– and resumes prattling about this and that, what she's done for the past few days, her tea with Maribelle, some petty little spat with Chrom, a tantrum she'd thrown on Frederick, high praise for Frederick's goodness. And then there's talk of Ada, how nice it is to tea with Ada, now wonderful it is to have a sister-in-law now.

Not wanting to listen in too closely while Lissa has her visit, Ada wanders the circumference of the columbarium, looking at names here or there. She recognizes nothing, but she likely wouldn't even if she had memories to call upon; she wonders idly if there is a family columbarium for her somewhere, a modest little stone cube with a dozen niches in the middle of nowhere. Is there a niche for her there? Do they think she's dead, and have an empty urn for her, having assumed their lost daughter must be dead?

Does she have a mother who visits her and prattles about her day, or a sister who bemoans problems with village boys and what magic she'd like to learn next, or a brother who won't visit because it feels like a farce to talk to someone who isn't there?

Ada shivers. She's not sure if it's the cold.

"Hey, Ada?" Lissa calls.

Ada turns.

"Yes?"

"C'mere," she says. "I need your hands for a second."

Curious, Ada makes her way back over. Lissa gestures up at her mother's niche.

"Chrom told me about something the other day and I wanna check," Lissa says. She reaches up, and Ada feels a fleeting moment of fear when Lissa, on her tiptoes, takes the urn between her hands. Ada moves in.

"If you're going to move that, let me do it. I can reach it better," she scolds. And, feeling like an idiot for agreeing to this, she does just that. The stone urn is heavy between her hands but not too difficult to lift, and Ada lowers it down to chest-level to better balance it. "What on earth are you looking for?"

But she sees it, even as Lissa returns to the niche. She steps up on the lower one to lift herself up high enough, and she reaches for the small box that was hidden behind the urn, perfectly tucked between the wall and where the urn sat, hidden from view.

"Is that…?" Ada asks.

She doesn't even need to finish. Lissa hops down, flips the tiny little catch and opens it up. Ada nearly drops the damn urn when she sees the two rings nestled inside –– the other two pieces to what is now her ring.

"Yup," Lissa says, triumphantly.

Ada immediately boosts the urn back to its place so she can give the rings her full attention.

"Chrom said they were interred. I thought that meant they were six feet under," Ada says. "How did you even know I was looking for this?"

"I talked with Maribelle, who talked with Cordelia, who talked with Frederick, who talked with Chrom," Lissa says. She pauses, and then frowns. Her voice dips towards scolding: "You know, that's one thing you're going to have to learn about court, by the way. Everyone knows everything. There's no private business unless you're sneaky!"

Ada's not sure what to make of the lesson, but something strikes her about having all these people looking out for something she'd only had as a casual interest. At the end of the day it's just a ring –– the man it represents is the only part that truly matters, she'd thought –– but for some reason, the gesture strikes Ada as something unexpectedly important.

Lissa is beaming at her. Lissa is this absolute puppy of a girl, cute as a button and proud of herself, and it has never felt more obvious than it does now.

"I understand," Ada says. She puts her hands out for the box, and Lissa places it there with a little smile. "Gods, should I show these to Chrom, or are we just putting them back?"

"Go show them to Chrom," she says, and she nods firmly. "Now."

"But I don't want them to think I came here and rooted around for them," Ada says. Especially Frederick, not when they're finally making their first steps at patching things up. And at the thought of Frederick, she realizes her earlier thought that he was being dishonest with her was correct, but perhaps it doesn't matter now. She doesn't want a reason to be cross with him, not at all, and she won't spoil the moment on it.

"If they're mad, tell them I did it," Lissa says. She dusts her hands off. "Go! I'm going to talk to Mum a bit more, private stuff. Go see Chrom. It might put a smile on his face too!"

Ada gives the rings one long, last look, and then she closes the box. She looks at Lissa and she can't help but sweep her into a big hug. Lissa titters, squeezing Ada around the middle so tight that Ada thinks her head might pop off, and despite her small stature, she even lifts Ada off her feet in the process.

"Thank you," Ada says.

"I didn't expect you to be this excited by it!" Lissa says, and then she rushes Ada on her way.

 

—⚜—

 

Ada nearly runs right by Frederick.

It's not that she means to, really, it's just that she's so set on finding Chrom before he ends up ensconced in court again for the afternoon. He turns his head as she approaches and calls her name. It's with a surprising dexterity, too, that Frederick not only catches her by the arm but also slows her to a halt right in front of him. She very nearly yelps, but instead she finds herself staring up at him.

"Don't run in the halls," he says, like she's a little girl. "It's unbecoming."

"Where's Chrom?" she asks, breathlessly.

"Upstairs, in the solar," he says. "They're hanging the new tapestries today and he's to give his approval. What's all this rushing for?"

"Lissa gave me these," Ada says.

She holds up the box.

Frederick seems to know exactly what it is. An odd look settles on his face, and Ada feels rather fit in her assumption that he'd always known but just hadn't wanted to tell her. Fair enough, she tells herself. More than fair, even. She hadn't exactly been open to him.

"I see," he says, "let's go."

 

—⚜—

 

Ada has never been up to the solar, either, so it seems new places come in threes today. The stairs to the great chambers of the castle are wide open and on full display, and the guard twice as thick as any to Chrom or Lissa's quarters. Ada takes those stairs with a swell to her heart, two at a time, the box still clutched in her hand. Frederick follows at a crisp pace, his expression settled into cool neutrality.

Chrom is just inside the doorway, standing in the middle of the room. It's mostly empty, and even if she's never been here before she has the distinct impression that whatever it was before, it has been greatly changed now to reflect the changing of the rule. Ada slows up in awe just in sight of the massive bed, which perhaps wide enough to sleep four or five adults, the new bedlinens crisp white, and the massive velvet drapes in heron blue and tied back with sashes. The headboard is carved wood, tall enough that Ada is sure she could not reach the top even on her tip-toes, and a great mark of Naga is leafed in gold in the center of it.

"Wow," Ada says.

Chrom turns, and he looks so pleased to see her that 

"Oh, you didn't want to be carried over the threshold?" he says.

"Not really," she says. "But you can if you want later, I'm sure it'll be just as breathtaking when it's all finished."

"Sounds like a plan," he says. There's a smile on his voice. "How was watching court?"

She walks past him, drinking it all in.

"It was busy. This is your ––  _our_ quarters, soon?"

"It is," Chrom says. He gestures aside, here and there. "There's a private bath there, with a marble tub. A dressing room –– two, actually, one for me and one for you. A sitting room over there. A bigger balcony."

"Wow," Ada says. She turns back to look at him; both Chrom and Frederick are looking at her with some amusement. "What?"

"I told you she'd approve," Chrom says to Frederick.

"I do," Ada says. She pushes herself back on track, willing to not be distracted any futher: "But I have something you'll like, too –– look."

She holds up the box and watches Chrom's eyebrows lift. He closes the few steps between them and puts a hand out for it, and she opens it and places it in his open palm. She has the distinct pleasure of watching his face light up.

"Whoa," he says. "You found them!" 

"Lissa did, actually. She said she talked to you, who talked to Frederick––"

"Who spoke with Cordelia after hearing it from Maribelle," Frederick supplies. "Yes. I suspected this would happen. I thought perhaps Chrom would fetch them himself, however."

Chrom shakes his head. Not a chance, perhaps. Still, he takes out the two rings, and before he can even ask, Ada removes the one on her finger and hands it to him in favour of the box. She watches him slot them together, the three rings interlocking to make one ring, and as he pivots them around, the little decorative stones slide into place to make the Mark of Naga, laid horizontal across the band.

"Pretty," Ada says.

"I suspect they haven't been linked since…" Chrom pauses. "Well, twenty years. Most of my lifetime."

He holds it up to the light. The gem in the middle glints.

"Well, I'm glad," Chrom says, and he sounds relieved. "I didn't want to worry you, but it's been in my mind all week, too. I kept thinking about how I couldn't even put together a proper ring for you, one suitable for the future queen –– I didn't want marriage to be one more thing I wasn't prepared for."

"Even if we didn't find them," Ada says. "It'd still just be a ring."

"It's _not_ just a ring," he says. "This is my heritage. I want us to be everything that my parents weren't. I want to have my wife by my side, and make a good life for you. I want us to raise our own children, see them grow. I want to see our son or daughter succeed me one day. I want us to have a better Ylisse than my parents did, stronger, more just." 

He pauses. His expression grows very serious, and he meets her eyes as firmly as he did just weeks ago, when he first put the ring on her finger.

"I think if I'm going to rejuvenate my father's kingdom, and wield his sword, and forge allies out of his enemies… I think I should reclaim this ring, too."

He splits the rings apart again, letting them fall apart in the cup of his palm, and then he takes Ada's right hand. She presents her bared finger to him and he slides a ring back on –– not his father's this time, but his mother's. He takes his father's for his own, and when it doesn't fit over his knuckles, he chuckles a little awkwardly. Ada can't help but laugh too.

"Well, it's meant for the bride, too," he admits. "I'll put it on a chain for now."

He closes his fist around it, but there still remains one more ring. Ada and Chrom both look at it a beat, then at each other, and then they both turn to Frederick. Chrom looks hopeful, and apparently he need not ask. Frederick looks between her and Chrom with raised eyebrows.

"Me, sire?" he says.

"Of course," Chrom says.

"It could be any witness," Frederick says.

"Who else deserves it? Who else looks after us and safeguards us as you do?" Chrom asks. And then, with a sliver of concern: "Am I asking too much?"

"Of course not," Frederick says. "I would accept in a heartbeat, but…"

His eyes meet Ada's.

"Is this what you want?" he asks her.

"Of course," Chrom says, swiftly, but Frederick doesn't turn, doesn't even flinch. He still watches her.

She knows the answer without even thinking. They may not get along at all times, and their newfound peace with each other may be fragile and new, but there really is no other option, no other person she could imagine looking over them. Ada just nods, seriously. 

"Yes, but…" she trails, and then plucks together her words. "Maybe not in the same way. I couldn't possibly demand your alliegance. I wouldn't dream of asking you to be everything to me the way you are to Chrom, both because I'm not yet prepared for that kind of devotion and because…"

Frederick's eyebrows knit, his mouth dipping in concern.

"Well, because I haven't earned it," Ada admits. "Not yet. Maybe that day will come –– I hope it does –– but until then, what I do need is a friend. And I think that's enough, for a friend to watch over our marriage."

Frederick is quiet. His brown eyes seem unreadable, dark and calculating, and Ada finds herself staring at him with such anticipation that she can almost see her own anxiety reflected back in them.

"If you would," she says. "I'd be honoured, Frederick."

"I see," Frederick says.

Frederick just nods, one curt, sharp little bob of his chin.

"In that case," he says, "I shall accept."

And so Frederick steps up just between them, so that they are a trinity, standing together in these new quarters for the first time. Frederick puts out a hand, and with a long sigh of relief, Chrom places the third ring in his palm. 

"Join hands," Frederick orders.

"Thank the gods," Ada says, and she can't help but laugh when Chrom does. Chrom clasps a hand over hers, his ring caught between them. Frederick lays his hand overtop, holding them together.

"What the Gods have brought together," Frederick says, "let no man tear asunder."

Chrom lets out a sigh, one of relief and anticipation all in one, and Ada imagines she can watch some of the burden melt off his shoulders, dripping down his arms and into the hands they're sharing together. His eyes meet hers so honestly, so open, and if it weren't a matter of dignity she would fling herself into an embrace right there, cup his cheeks, caress the soft space below his eyes.

"Thank you, Frederick," Chrom says. "It means the world to me."

"To both of us," Ada says.

Frederick nods. In those dark eyes, Ada wonders if she sees tears forming, but he pulls apart just as quick.

"I took an oath, and I stand by it with pride," he says. And then, swiftly, almost jovially: "Well! Court will be back in session very shortly, and there is much to do and much to learn. Shall we?"

Ada adjusts her hand on Chrom's to take it in hers. Frederick flanks Chrom's other side.

And together, the three of them walk forward.

 

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for completing yet another round with me!! As always, thank you so much for reading. This one was a bit of a tricky one for me so the feedback I've gotten both on and off AO3 has been fantastic, and after three years it really feels like I'm settling into a solid groove with these characters!!
> 
> For once I have my next works planned out already; next we'll see a lighthearted first foray into non-Chrobin centric stories set in this universe, as well as some miscellaneous little ficlets. After that, if I'm not burnt out or busy with work, it'll probably be a psychological siege story! We'll see what happens.
> 
> Cheers,  
> Jenn


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